Fetus in fetu

[vector2]

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I think its reasonable to bring up those specific concerns regarding religion if you were considering or evaluating them. The Methodist example is a good one and a good reason that I'm not Methodist. For Aquinas if you want to act the skeptic with it, then you're going to have to do so with something other than a naturalistic, materialist born in part due to Aquinas himself. Aquinas' logic fits into the greater Catholic Church which has addressed practically all of the philosophical questions that humans have struggled with since we had rational thought. Critiquing one aspect of it while holding to an overall loosely defined naturalism that utilizes, again loosely defined, "empiricism" as its justification isn't serious (what I mean by serious is that it isn't a system clearly defined, formed and prepared to fully replace previously set tenets. I'm going to assume that recent secular fads/trends are not in of themselves displays of the systems you're referring to.)

I always find the "well, that's a good reason I'm not a member of X religion" line from a theist who ascribes to Y religion to be a bit amusing. Reminds me of the quip about the atheist talking to the theist....."we're both atheists, I just subscribe to the one fewer religion than you."

With regard to Aquinas, do you see the epistemic sneakiness of what you're doing here? You're telling me if I want to be a skeptic of Aquinian philosophy, it literally can't be done through non-Aquinian means. Think about the recursiveness there for a second. In essence, you've ascribed to a system wherein you claim axiomatically that faith and reason are complementary, or that faith and materialism are complementary, and then go on to claim that therefore reason or naturalism can't be used to criticize Aquinian philosophy. The problem is, you and Tom haven't substantively rebutted any external criticism, but rather just said that your system is closed and self-referential. Thus, for all intents and purposes, it's unfalsifiable in the Popperian sense. Ultimately, there's nothing there that makes Aquinian Catholicism any more or less valid than any other monotheistic system to a third-party skeptic.

(also, I'd argue the Catholic church hasn't satisfactorily "addressed practically all of the philosophical questions that humans have struggled with since we had rational thought")

I've really been going on the premise that a person who is that far on the fanaticism scale be, it a religious or secular bent and from a mental illness or brainwashing of sorts, that they aren't going to respond to "plainly obvious" logic. Really no difference in rationalizing a member of the Manson Family or a Branch Davidian. I thought we were focusing more on what was more "defensible" which is what I was tailoring my argument too.

Heh, indeed there may be no significant difference in your example.....because both Charles Manson and David Koresh used (in part) unfalsifiable, supernatural claims to motivate their followers. Manson was heavily influenced by his interpretation of 60s counterculture and the Bible, and he used a bunch of religious and apocalyptic language to justify his actions. Dude thought he was a Christ-like figure sent to earth to start the race war and emerge as the leader of the NWO.

Again, the point here isn't that you can't find an example of secular fanaticism as bad as religious fanaticism. Of course such examples exist. But my assertion is that, on average, religious fanaticism is still more dangerous because 1. Belief in a divine authority or higher power is typically held with a higher degree of [typically unfalsifiable] conviction than a secular belief, 2. Belief in a divine authority or higher power, on average, is capable of motivating many, many more people to action than a secular belief, 3. Secular belief, on average, is more open to rational discussion and compromise than religious beliefs rooted in divine/supernatural authority.

And again, from a theoretical standpoint vis a vis the ease of disabusing people from silly notions, just consider for a moment what mechanisms you would use to demonstrate Koresh's belief that he was God's vessel put on earth to set up a polygamous Davidic kingdom in Jerusalem by way of Waco....is actually false. Versus say DPRK's claim to all the Juche folks that Kim Jong Il never defecated or urinated in his life.

I portrayed the left as I did not as a "pro-right/GOP" shot. The federal government today would likely be considered tyrannical by the standards of our Founding Fathers no matter which party is in charge. As far as the distinctions in the parties, I don't see much outside of which large interest groups' mouthpieces they choose to be.

You're right this is not something new and has been going on for a long time, the Founding Fathers didn't write in a Christian dominant set of ideals in the constitution (outside of some specifically Christian touches) they largely supported personal liberty and self-governance, which in a populace predominantly Christian, you had a lot of laws supporting Christian ideals.

The extremely broad and ill-defined "American Left" has pushed back on many of these laws, which as a proponent of self-governance I don't criticize their right too, but has also pushed back hard on societal norms starting in the 1960s and continuing today. This makes up a shift in the zeitgeist that you referenced earlier and an acceleration of the "attack" if you will on traditionally Christian societal norms. Some broad objective evidence of a "worse" society have evolved from this, the largest and most obvious being the large increase in children raised in a non-nuclear family the rates of poverty, increased dependence on welfare, and lower education levels.

One might even say....America is not as great as it used to be and perhaps something needs to be done to return it to its previous state? 😉

In all seriousness, though, this is a terrible argument against secularism rooted mostly in a nostalgic mythos that idealizes post-war America as a time where traditional values reigned and societal bliss ensued. The reality is that the Normal Rockwell view of America is the pinnacle of selective memory. Tell me, what was happening to the pocketbooks and civil liberties of women, people of color, and LGBTQ people during the economic boom and reign of traditional values?

And as far as nuclear families, there's a strong argument to be made that that structure certainly wasn't in place in the 50s because of its explicit benefit to children. Ignoring for a second that children are capable of thriving in non-traditional family structures, nuclear families at that time existed mainly to reinforce traditional gender roles and restrict women's autonomy and opportunities. Women weren't making the choice to only stay home and raise children- they were essentially forced to.

Also, what actually were/are the rates of poverty and educational attainment in the 40s/50s compared to now? And even if they are lower now, you've mostly established there maybe is a correlation to the decline of "traditional" values. A causative argument is still wanting.

It's more of a comment that such a secular world existed before (maybe not completely how you would describe it, but fairly close I think) today's current scientific advancements and that there are lessons that could be learned there. For you last couple of sentences, I don't engage in abortion debate unless there's a clear definition for at what point a human being is defined and why, and/or what rights the mother has and what rights the unborn fetus has in pregnancy.

Wait, what? Are you really saying immediate pre-Dark Ages Rome is a "fairly close" approximation of a "secular world?"

 

[vector2]

It's not a living document in the sense that people (legislators and judges) can just change theirs mind about what it says and means, or dig and twist to pretend it means what they want it to mean. Or what it should mean.

Again, I'm not really for gun control in any substantive way the rest of the left is, but I'm pretty sure if memory serves me correctly that a few years ago you had to write me a four paragraph explanation on why "well regulated Militia" doesn't mean what those words plainly mean to the average person today.

I believe you've also gone on at length about your belief that the average citizen today should be able to possess arms to protect against the tyranny of [mostly] the local police state, even though arguably the Founders primarily feared the tyranny of an unjust standing federal army oppressing the people.

 

[Goro]

Again, I'm not really for gun control in any substantive way the rest of the left is, but I'm pretty sure if memory serves me correctly that a few years ago you had to write me a four paragraph explanation on why "well regulated Militia" doesn't mean what those words plainly mean to the average person today.

Justice Scalia had an almost Silly Putty-like ability to contort his defences of the 2nd A to ignore the militia part of the single sentence that makes up the amendment.

Also odd that Justice Originalist himself found a right to self defence in the 2A.

 

[Just D.O. it]

Justice Scalia had an almost Silly Putty-like ability to contort his defences of the 2nd A to ignore the militia part of the single sentence that makes up the amendment.

Also odd that Justice Originalist himself found a right to self defence in the 2A.

The fact that anyone takes the ideological mumbo jumbo of these "judicial philosophies" seriously is why I think intro to US gov should be a required gen ed everywhere.

The notion that SCOTUS judges enforce the law on policy instead of trying to enforce their preferred policy on the law is easily dispelled by briefly skimming the opinions of the court on any polarizing issue of your choosing. It isn't even a modern phenomenon. It has been this way since its inception.

 

[Angus Avagadro]

I see what you are saying here. The point I am trying to make is that “Originalism” interpretation of the constitution is a theory focused on the process, and not on substance. It seeks to conserve the meaning of the Constitution as it was written by the Founders. A good originalist judge will not hesitate to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution’s original meaning, regardless of contemporary and burning socio-political issues or political consequences. Therefore, it cannot be a Living document as how Liberals tend to interpret it. Of course, this originalism viewpoint invariably leads to politically conservative results, and hence the GOP always touts this view.
Although, I completely agree with your point that the Amendment process is completely broken down, and is basically non-existent at this time.

It's not broken down, there is not an overwhelming consensus to ammend it. The process is still intact, just not the will to change it.

 

[Arch Guillotti]

Justice Scalia had an almost Silly Putty-like ability to contort his defences of the 2nd A to ignore the militia part of the single sentence that makes up the amendment.

Also odd that Justice Originalist himself found a right to self defence in the 2A.

The NRA and their attendant right wing gun crazies have completely perverted the original intent of the second amendment.

 

[deleted1156722]

I wasn't saying many states give big benefits to pregnant women.

I was explaining that IF these benefits did exist, which was the scenario put forth by TexBlazer, it would not really be "even more laudable" to give these benefits to those seeking abortions.

The state can dictate this the same way they can dictate that you can't kill your 3 yr old. The state can dictate you cant steal even if you feel welfare or unemployment benefits are insufficient. The pro-life stance is that abortion is something akin to murder. You don't have a right to demand incentives for "not murdering".


Yeah... guess what everyone has been ok with abortion done to when there is danger to the mother's life. That was accepted and happening way before ROE came down or any other abortion rights law was passed.

We are not talking about those abortions.

So I infer that from your post that you do not have a problem with late-term abortions if the fetal malformations are incompatible with life or the pregnancy poses maternal health risk.

Well, guess what, that is actually the case for all of those late-term abortions- which the hard right wing has been portraying as “partial birth” and “ninth month” abortions to draw outrage from the public. The Project Veritas and the Pro-Life movement seized upon the <2% cases in the above categories and conveniently portrayed abortion as “murder”. That is because the pathos evoked by “murder of baby” is way more stronger than the “murder of clumps of cells” under 13 weeks.
The reality is the most cases of abortion >92% abortions is <13 weeks.
If you recall, Trump made a very specific attack on Hillary Clinton’s position on abortion at the final presidential debate, arguing that the Democratic candidate was “saying in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb.”
So you must then disagree with the above mis-characterization.

 

[deleted1156722]

It's not broken down, there is not an overwhelming consensus to ammend it. The process is still intact, just not the will to change it.

Amending the Constitution requires a double supermajority. Any amendment introduced in Congress has to pass both houses by a two-thirds vote, and then must be approved by the legislatures of three-quarters of the states.
In essence, this process is technically non-existent with our current state of affairs.
However, one can be technically precise and call it “intact and not broken down” and just needing the consensus.

 

[rowsdower88]

Justice Scalia had an almost Silly Putty-like ability to contort his defences of the 2nd A to ignore the militia part of the single sentence that makes up the amendment.

Also odd that Justice Originalist himself found a right to self defence in the 2A.

I think the broader liberal legal movement needs to come together and realize how hollow Originalism is as a concept.

To do that, we also need a counter to the Federalist Society.

 

[pgg]

Again, I'm not really for gun control in any substantive way the rest of the left is, but I'm pretty sure if memory serves me correctly that a few years ago you had to write me a four paragraph explanation on why "well regulated Militia" doesn't mean what those words plainly mean to the average person today.

Yes, I remember us talking about that. I went looking but I can't find the thread with Google. I suspect it got dumped into sociopolitical which doesn't seem to be indexable. Lost to internet bit rot I guess.

I believe you've also gone on at length about your belief that the average citizen today should be able to possess arms to protect against the tyranny of [mostly] the local police state, even though arguably the Founders primarily feared the tyranny of an unjust standing federal army oppressing the people.

I don't know if you've looked at the cops lately, the way they tool around in armored surplus military equipment as they wear stylish black uniforms with helmets and knee pads and body armor while waging various battles in the War On Drugs, but it sure looks like a standing army. 🙂

I'm being a bit facetious, of course. A bit.

The police are an armed agent of the state, and one that could be said to be used against the people a great deal more often than our actual standing military. TomaTO toMAHto, but I think we're closer to that Founder-feared hypothetical oppression coming from a police state than from a standing-army state. It sure isn't the Army doing no-knock searches, or straight-up-warrantless searches, or trampling 5th Amendment rights, or breaking up peaceably-assembling protesters.


It may surprise you that I thought the NYSRPA v Bruen decision was weird in the way it heavily relied on historical tradition. I had expected and hoped for strict scrutiny to be the standard handed down by the Court. In reading the Breyer dissent (to which Kagan and Sotomayor signed on) one of his major criticisms was how hard it was going to be for lower courts to apply that standard, to the point of being impractical and unworkable. Since they're judges, not historians.

I agree that it's hard but I don't really buy into the full depth of his criticism, which largely amounts to "Well it's too hard to do it correctly." In addition to not being historians, judges aren't subject matter experts in a lot of things they rule on. Your specific example of what "well regulated" means is a good one when it comes to interpreting the document in an originalist historic basis fashion (functional, competent, capable) vs what a 2023 casual reader would think (policies, bylaws, restrictive rules). My opinion, as you know, is that this is a moderately complex and hard question, but one with a clearly correct answer, that has even been recently affirmed by SCOTUS, yet you don't have to go any further than this thread to find well-educated people who sincerely think that the phrase "well regulated" is some kind of magical checkmate utterance that refutes any pro-2A argument.

Anyway. I'm honestly not sure if that historical tradition ruling is a better outcome than strict scrutiny would've been for long term defense and recovery of the 2nd Amendment, but most analysts think it will be. So I can't say I'm disappointed in the outcome.[1] The 2A has been a second-class right for so long that I'm relieved by any ruling that pushes in the other direction. But I am uneasy about the mechanism because it feels a little conjured and sort of a departure from the usual pattern of conservative arguments from the Court - which I generally find to be more logical and based in the law and the Constitution than what comes from the liberal side.

It seems to me that strict scrutiny and an honest reading of the original meaning and intent, is the best and correct way to interpret the Constitution and assess to what degree enumerated rights can be regulated by the government.

Anyway, speaking of that dissent, and that old area where we disagree about the liberal judges leaning on what they want or think the law should say rather than what is or what it does - I think it's notable that the lengthy preamble to their dissent was a list of mass shootings. Not a mention of law or precedent. Not a discussion of what the words meant then or now or how they should be applied. Or historical precedent or context (though he got to that later). But an emotional appeal concerning the consequences they attribute to a lack of gun control.

Alito even called them out on it later, kind of rudely, but he ain't wrong:

Why, for example, does the dissent think it is relevant to recount the mass shootings that have occurred in recent years? Does the dissent think that laws like New York's prevent or deter such atrocities? Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home? And how does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of the list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator.

[1] I mention my pleasure at the outcome of Bruen specifically to draw attention to the split between my discomfort with the mechanism of that decision, and pleasure at the a result favorable to a civil right I feel has been badly infringed upon. I have similar splits in how I feel about rulings like Citizens United and Dobbs (correct rulings, harmful outcomes). I've been accused of overlooking flaws in the conservative Justices' arguments because I favor the outcomes they provide - untrue. I just genuinely find their written opinions to be sharper and more logical than the dissents.

 

[pgg]

Amending the Constitution requires a double supermajority. Any amendment introduced in Congress has to pass both houses by a two-thirds vote, and then must be approved by the legislatures of three-quarters of the states.
In essence, this process is technically non-existent with our current state of affairs.
However, one can be technically precise and call it “intact and not broken down” and just needing the consensus.

It's supposed to be hard.

I suspect that if the day comes when some Constitutional flaw or inadequacy carries an actual serious threat to the fabric of the country, we'll get it done.

Maybe the lesson here is that today's lack of consensus for any amendments just means that there aren't any serious flaws that can only be fixed by amendment.

 

[Southpaw]

The police are an armed agent of the state, and one that could be said to be used against the people a great deal more often than our actual standing military. TomaTO toMAHto, but I think we're closer to that Founder-feared hypothetical oppression coming from a police state than from a standing-army state. It sure isn't the Army doing no-knock searches, or straight-up-warrantless searches, or trampling 5th Amendment rights, or breaking up peaceably-assembling protesters.

How does being armed protect you against this enemy of the state, this tyranny? I don't see how it does absolutely anything other than increase the likelihood that you yourself are killed. And if you do feel threatened or your life in danger, and actually use your weapon against the police, then you are absolutely dead.

 

[vector2]

Yes, I remember us talking about that. I went looking but I can't find the thread with Google. I suspect it got dumped into sociopolitical which doesn't seem to be indexable. Lost to internet bit rot I guess.


I don't know if you've looked at the cops lately, the way they tool around in armored surplus military equipment as they wear stylish black uniforms with helmets and knee pads and body armor while waging various battles in the War On Drugs, but it sure looks like a standing army. 🙂

I'm being a bit facetious, of course. A bit.

The police are an armed agent of the state, and one that could be said to be used against the people a great deal more often than our actual standing military. TomaTO toMAHto, but I think we're closer to that Founder-feared hypothetical oppression coming from a police state than from a standing-army state. It sure isn't the Army doing no-knock searches, or straight-up-warrantless searches, or trampling 5th Amendment rights, or breaking up peaceably-assembling protesters.

It may surprise you that I thought the NYSRPA v Bruen decision was weird in the way it heavily relied on historical tradition. I had expected and hoped for strict scrutiny to be the standard handed down by the Court. In reading the Breyer dissent (to which Kagan and Sotomayor signed on) one of his major criticisms was how hard it was going to be for lower courts to apply that standard, to the point of being impractical and unworkable. Since they're judges, not historians.

I agree that it's hard but I don't really buy into the full depth of his criticism, which largely amounts to "Well it's too hard to do it correctly." In addition to not being historians, judges aren't subject matter experts in a lot of things they rule on. Your specific example of what "well regulated" means is a good one when it comes to interpreting the document in an originalist historic basis fashion (functional, competent, capable) vs what a 2023 casual reader would think (policies, bylaws, restrictive rules). My opinion, as you know, is that this is a moderately complex and hard question, but one with a clearly correct answer, that has even been recently affirmed by SCOTUS, yet you don't have to go any further than this thread to find well-educated people who sincerely think that the phrase "well regulated" is some kind of magical checkmate utterance that refutes any pro-2A argument.

Anyway. I'm honestly not sure if that historical tradition ruling is a better outcome than strict scrutiny would've been for long term defense and recovery of the 2nd Amendment, but most analysts think it will be. So I can't say I'm disappointed in the outcome.[1] The 2A has been a second-class right for so long that I'm relieved by any ruling that pushes in the other direction. But I am uneasy about the mechanism because it feels a little conjured and sort of a departure from the usual pattern of conservative arguments from the Court - which I generally find to be more logical and based in the law and the Constitution than what comes from the liberal side.

It seems to me that strict scrutiny and an honest reading of the original meaning and intent, is the best and correct way to interpret the Constitution and assess to what degree enumerated rights can be regulated by the government.

Anyway, speaking of that dissent, and that old area where we disagree about the liberal judges leaning on what they want or think the law should say rather than what is or what it does - I think it's notable that the lengthy preamble to their dissent was a list of mass shootings. Not a mention of law or precedent. Not a discussion of what the words meant then or now or how they should be applied. Or historical precedent or context (though he got to that later). But an emotional appeal concerning the consequences they attribute to a lack of gun control.

Alito even called them out on it later, kind of rudely, but he ain't wrong:





[1] I mention my pleasure at the outcome of Bruen specifically to draw attention to the split between my discomfort with the mechanism of that decision, and pleasure at the a result favorable to a civil right I feel has been badly infringed upon. I have similar splits in how I feel about rulings like Citizens United and Dobbs (correct rulings, harmful outcomes). I've been accused of overlooking flaws in the conservative Justices' arguments because I favor the outcomes they provide - untrue. I just genuinely find their written opinions to be sharper and more logical than the dissents.

In an argument about interpretation of text and the consequences of originalism, I'm not particularly apt to accept any "TomaTO toMAHto" appeals, nor really any facetiousness about what the local police look like or resemble. If the Founders feared an oppressive *local* police force as much as they obviously feared a strong federal military infringing upon states' rights, then that should've been explicitly written, right?

Consider for a moment that on one hand you're criticizing justices naming modern mass shootings as part of their dissent, but on the other hand you have no problem citing modern local police forces with modern armored surplus equipment waging a war on modern psychoactive substances as a reason to support 2A. Fact remains, in both cases there is a large amount of subjective interpretation of the text going on through a present day lens.

 

[pgg]

How does being armed protect you against this enemy of the state, this tyranny? I don't see how it does absolutely anything other than increase the likelihood that you yourself are killed. And if you do feel threatened or your life in danger, and actually use your weapon against the police, then you are absolutely dead.

I'd link the old thread if I could find it.

tldr version -

It might not. And I'm not talking about resisting the abuses I enumerated above with violence now, while there is a free press, free communication, free elections, and a generally functional judicial system. But it's not hard to conceive of a time when the abuses rise to the point that it is worth the risk of dying to resist them with force. Personal survival isn't the point of resistance; collective survival of a community and its values is the point.

One doesn't have to look very far in the world today to see places where unarmed citizenry are helpless in the face of government abuses, or look too far back in time to see the same. In the last 150ish years this country has faced multiple existential threats, civil war, two world wars. It's hubris to think none of it can happen again. Recall that during WWII individual Americans were called upon to donate firearms to England, where the citizenry had semi-voluntarily disarmed itself, but then faced the prospect of invasion. The UK and its subjects of the crown didn't get it then and they don't get it now. If there were any people in Ukraine who didn't get it two years ago, they sure get it now; hopefully they don't forget it a few generations down the line. The Uyghurs get it, but it's too late and their culture will be extinct soon. You want to disarm the citizens of this country. I want them armed to the teeth. I'm not afraid of gun violence; you are, despite the indisputable fact that the vast, vast majority of it is criminal vs criminal and that your risk of random innocent victimhood is negligible.

 

[pgg]

In an argument about interpretation of text and the consequences of originalism, I'm not particularly apt to accept any "TomaTO toMAHto" appeals, nor really any facetiousness about what the local police look like or resemble. If the Founders feared an oppressive *local* police force as much as they obviously feared a strong federal military infringing upon states' rights, then that should've been explicitly written, right?

Consider for a moment that on one hand you're criticizing justices naming modern mass shootings as part of their dissent, but on the other hand you have no problem citing modern local police forces with modern armored surplus equipment waging a war on modern psychoactive substances as a reason to support 2A. Fact remains, in both cases there is a large amount of subjective interpretation of the text going on through a present day lens.

The point was that the police actually are a de facto standing army in their current incarnation. They're doing all the things the Founders feared a standing army would do, except quartering themselves in our houses.

 

[Southpaw]

You want to disarm the citizens of this country. I want them armed to the teeth. I'm not afraid of gun violence; you are, despite the indisputable fact that the vast, vast majority of it is criminal vs criminal and that your risk of random innocent victimhood is negligible.

Negligible? I'm sure your words provide solace to parents who've lost their children to school shootings. I'm sure it helps them sleep at night.

Restrictions don't mean inability to own a firearm. Look around at the rest of the civilized world. You're not afraid because your kids are grown and out of the house. Or you wanted their teachers armed. Or you're carrying around automatic weapons with hundreds of rounds everywhere you go, driving your tank, back seat full of grenades. Whatevs. Your end-of-times argument holds no water with me.

 

[vector2]

The point was that the police actually are a de facto standing army in their current incarnation. They're doing all the things the Founders feared a standing army would do, except quartering themselves in our houses.

We're going to have to disagree. Because no, despite some well-funded police forces' pseudomilitarization with surplus body armor and a couple Lenco Bearcats, they are not, de facto or de jure, standing armies.

You are probably the number one user of the phrase "words have meaning" on this forum, so it pains me to have to say to you that militia, select militia, home guard, state guard, national guard, army reserve, standing army, and police force all have distinct meanings.

 

[pgg]

Negligible? I'm sure your words provide solace to parents who've lost their children to school shootings. I'm sure it helps them sleep at night.

I wasn't trying to comfort anyone.

And yes, negligible. You're a trained scientist like the rest of us. You could do the math.

Restrictions don't mean inability to own a firearm. Look around at the rest of the civilized world.

As I've written dozens of times, I'm not opposed to all restrictions.

I'm opposed to restrictions that are some combination of impractical, pointless, unconstitutional, arbitrary, racist, classist, and/or preludes to confiscation.

You're not afraid because your kids are grown and out of the house. Or you wanted their teachers armed. Or you're carrying around automatic weapons with hundreds of rounds everywhere you go, driving your tank, back seat full of grenades. Whatevs. Your end-of-times argument holds no water with me.

That's a nice list of strawmen and presumption, flavored with sarcasm. But it's not an argument.

 

[pgg]

We're going to have to disagree. Because no, despite some well-funded police forces' pseudomilitarization with surplus body armor and a couple Lenco Bearcats, they are not, de facto or de jure, standing armies.

Not yet, hopefully never. I confess the use of some hyperbole. I don't have a universally dim view of the police, though I am distrustful and wary (even as a white law-abidin' dude living in rural America). But they sure do all the things that the Founders were concerned about - and it's mostly a recent development (last 30 years?) without any signs of changing course.

You are probably the number one user of the phrase "words have meaning" on this forum, so it pains me to have to say to you that militia, select militia, home guard, state guard, national guard, army reserve, standing army, and police force all have distinct meanings.

That is a fair criticism of my argument here, which may deserve some adjustment.

 

[Southpaw]

That's a nice list of strawmen and presumption, flavored with sarcasm. But it's not an argument.

Goal achieved. Stats on number of dead kids is meaningless for many reasons, one of which is that there's no number upon which you'd change your position.

 

[vector2]

Not yet, hopefully never. I confess the use of some hyperbole. I don't have a universally dim view of the police, though I am distrustful and wary (even as a white law-abidin' dude living in rural America). But they sure do all the things that the Founders were concerned about - and it's mostly a recent development (last 30 years?) without any signs of changing course.


That is a fair criticism of my argument here, which may deserve some adjustment.

And, indeed, I suspect the Founders would also be concerned about the fact that some civilians nowadays, by virtue of their granted liberties, can use a small arm with power they never could have dreamed of to murder 20 kindergarteners.

Yes, the local police are occasionally doing things that resemble the things the Founders feared a strong standing federal army would do. But when it comes down to brass tacks, local police are not a strong standing federal army. Textualism or originalism means interpreting the Constitution through the original understanding of its text and terms at the time it was written and ratified, rather than any later interpretations or changes in societal values or circumstances. It's not really fair to espouse the virtues of textualism while simultaneously claiming modern local police forces nowadays are like the oppressive standing army the Founders feared.

 

[deleted1156722]

It's supposed to be hard.

I suspect that if the day comes when some Constitutional flaw or inadequacy carries an actual serious threat to the fabric of the country, we'll get it done.

Maybe the lesson here is that today's lack of consensus for any amendments just means that there aren't any serious flaws that can only be fixed by amendment.

Appreciate your positivity, even if I don’t agree with what you are saying.

Our Founders designed the Constitution so that amendment would be “hard”, but not “impossible”. In fact, they ratified the document with many of the amendments that would become the Bill of Rights.

Of the nearly 11,000 Constitutional amendments that have been proposed over the past 233 years, only 27 have made it through. This paltry record would have surprised the nation’s founders, who were aware that the Constitution they had created was an imperfect document, and they assumed that future generations would fix their mistakes and regularly adapt the document to changing times by amendments.

But our Founders weren’t clairvoyants and also likely didn’t foresee that our perpetually grid-locked Congress would willingly give up so much of its power to the judicial and executive branches. Now, our country has became so reliant on our courts ( legislation from the bench) and president ( executive orders) to do what we are not able to achieve with the amendment process.

 

[rowsdower88]

Appreciate your positivity, even if I don’t agree with what you are saying.

Our Founders designed the Constitution so that amendment would be “hard”, but not “impossible”. In fact, they ratified the document with many of the amendments that would become the Bill of Rights.

Of the nearly 11,000 Constitutional amendments that have been proposed over the past 233 years, only 27 have made it through. This paltry record would have surprised the nation’s founders, who were aware that the Constitution they had created was an imperfect document, and they assumed that future generations would fix their mistakes and regularly adapt the document to changing times by amendments.

But our Founders weren’t clairvoyants and also likely didn’t foresee that our perpetually grid-locked Congress would willingly give up so much of its power to the judicial and executive branches. Now, our country has became so reliant on our courts ( legislation from the bench) and president ( executive orders) to do what we are not able to achieve with the amendment process.

Need another civil war to get a new and improved 14th amendment /s

 

[deleted1156722]

In fact, the constitutional amendment that is desperately needed to clean up our Congress at this time, is to establish congressional term limits.
All that congress needs to do is to garner the votes needed, and send the constitutional amendment to the states for approval. 😏
According to a recent poll, passing constitutional amendment to establish congressional term limits is favored by 83% of nationally registered voters:
86% of Republicans,
80% of Democrats and
84% of independents.
(Program for Public Consultation)

 

[rowsdower88]

In fact, the constitutional amendment that is desperately needed to clean up our Congress at this time, is to establish congressional term limits.
All that congress needs to do is to garner the votes needed, and send the constitutional amendment to the states for approval. 😏
According to a recent poll, passing constitutional amendment to establish congressional term limits is favored by 83% of nationally registered voters:
86% of Republicans,
80% of Democrats and
84% of independents.
(Program for Public Consultation)

Apart from addressing gerontocracy, what other problems do you see this fixing? Do you think it is worth the problems associated with reducing institutional knowledge in government? If you could devise a way to have term limits while avoiding the downsides I could be persuaded, but until then I'm probably in the 20% of Democrats who oppose them.

Five reasons to oppose congressional term limits | Brookings

“Nothing renders government more unstable than a frequent change of the persons that administer it.” –Roger Sherman, open letter, 1788. Congressional term limits have long been argued to be an easy mechanism for improving the effectiveness of Congress and government at large. More specifically...

www.brookings.edu

 

[deleted1156722]

Apart from addressing gerontocracy, what other problems do you see this fixing? Do you think it is worth the problems associated with reducing institutional knowledge in government? If you could devise a way to have term limits while avoiding the downsides I could be persuaded, but until then I'm probably in the 20% of Democrats who oppose them.

Five reasons to oppose congressional term limits | Brookings

“Nothing renders government more unstable than a frequent change of the persons that administer it.” –Roger Sherman, open letter, 1788. Congressional term limits have long been argued to be an easy mechanism for improving the effectiveness of Congress and government at large. More specifically...

www.brookings.edu

Most of the veteran congress members like to argue that elections are a form of term limits, and hence we don’t need to have formal constitutional term limits. Also, they like to make the familiar arguments such as their expertise and knowledge in congressional affairs and policies etc…( as per your above article which I disagree with).

I am (along with >80% of Americans of all political persuasions) strongly for constitutional term limits for the following reasons:

1) The truth is that the approval rating of Congress is consistently below 20%, yet the reelection rate of these members is over 95%, mainly because of the numerous advantages incumbents have over new challengers, making it virtually impossible to vote them out of office.

2) Congressional Term Limits will provide Fair and Competitive Elections. Ordinary people with real-work and real-world experience will have the opportunity to run for office because they will not need to raise millions of dollars to go up against the incumbent’s war chest.

3) Term Limits will help to get the dirty money out of politics as 97% of corporate super PAC money goes to the incumbents. Imposing Term limits will break this hold of the lobbyists and special interest groups who have the congress folks in their back pocket.

4) Ultimately, the provisions for constitutional amendments as envisioned by our Founders could happen only if there is change in status-quo. These elected people will have limited time in office to do the work they were sent there to do and the term limits forces them to return home, where they too must live under the laws they’ve enacted.

But none of us have to worry about this amendment, because our congress will never ever vote to put limits on their free loading, lifetime job and benefits. They aren’t that stupid!

 

[rowsdower88]

1) The truth is that the approval rating of Congress is consistently below 20%, yet the reelection rate of these members is over 95%, mainly because of the numerous advantages incumbents have over new challengers, making it virtually impossible to vote them out of office.

I dislike Congress' performance. I like the representatives I chose to represent me. Those aren't mutually exclusive positions to hold.

2) Congressional Term Limits will provide Fair and Competitive Elections. Ordinary people with real-work and real-world experience will have the opportunity to run for office because they will not need to raise millions of dollars to go up against the incumbent’s war chest.

Why do you believe this? Why wouldn't they be just as beholden to political benefactors as the status quo if not MORE so?

3) Term Limits will help to get the dirty money out of politics as 97% of corporate super PAC money goes to the incumbents. Imposing Term limits will break this hold of the lobbyists and special interest groups who have the congress folks in their back pocket.

I see no reason to believe this would reduce dirty money in politics, if anything it would worsen that problem as argument #5 in the Brookings paper describes.

4) Ultimately, the provisions for constitutional amendments as envisioned by our Founders could happen only if there is change in status-quo. These elected people will have limited time in office to do the work they were sent there to do and the term limits forces them to return home, where they too must live under the laws they’ve enacted.

I don't see an inherent problem with elected officials remaining elected for long periods of time.

The problem I have with Congressional Term Limits would be a dramatic transfer of power from Congressmen with institutional knowledge to Lobbyists with institutional knowledge.

 

[Angus Avagadro]

In fact, the constitutional amendment that is desperately needed to clean up our Congress at this time, is to establish congressional term limits.
All that congress needs to do is to garner the votes needed, and send the constitutional amendment to the states for approval. 😏
According to a recent poll, passing constitutional amendment to establish congressional term limits is favored by 83% of nationally registered voters:
86% of Republicans,
80% of Democrats and
84% of independents.
(Program for Public Consultation)

Our founders wanted our representatives to serve their term and return to their farms. Not keep serving until they are a nonagenerian. Serve two terms and pass the torch, imo. Imperfect, but will limit the corruption. Pres Biden has never held a job, but been a senator since 1973 , then VP, then now Pres. We need people who will do the peoples work, whilee not worrying about their re election. This is why issues like immigration, , excess govt spending, social security and medicare don't get addressed. They want to use these issues to get re elected.We don't need professional crooks, err...politicians. That goes for both parties.

 

[rowsdower88]

but will limit the corruption

There's some argument for this, but the people who study legislature term limits seem conflicted. I think it's a mistake to believe that term limits will, on their own, reduce corruption.

If we're worried about nonagenarians in office, wouldn't an age cap be a better option?

Political tenure, term limits and corruption

Political tenure (experience) is a double-edged sword: expediting government performance, while increasing political power with potentially harmful (c…

www.sciencedirect.com

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.3162/036298006X201742

 

[TexBlazer2106]

I always find the "well, that's a good reason I'm not a member of X religion" line from a theist who ascribes to Y religion to be a bit amusing. Reminds me of the quip about the atheist talking to the theist....."we're both atheists, I just subscribe to the one fewer religion than you."

With regard to Aquinas, do you see the epistemic sneakiness of what you're doing here? You're telling me if I want to be a skeptic of Aquinian philosophy, it literally can't be done through non-Aquinian means. Think about the recursiveness there for a second. In essence, you've ascribed to a system wherein you claim axiomatically that faith and reason are complementary, or that faith and materialism are complementary, and then go on to claim that therefore reason or naturalism can't be used to criticize Aquinian philosophy. The problem is, you and Tom haven't substantively rebutted any external criticism, but rather just said that your system is closed and self-referential. Thus, for all intents and purposes, it's unfalsifiable in the Popperian sense. Ultimately, there's nothing there that makes Aquinian Catholicism any more or less valid than any other monotheistic system to a third-party skeptic.

(also, I'd argue the Catholic church hasn't satisfactorily "addressed practically all of the philosophical questions that humans have struggled with since we had rational thought")

I don't really understand that quip because it makes all the difference in the world. If you don't "subscribe to a religion" then you have the responsibility to replace that value or moral system that religion provides with something else. Something that approaches the philisophical and metaphysical depth these religious institutions have done whether you agree with them or not. To place a neat package around them with a satirical bow just to completely discard it is naive because what you'd replace it with, to me in my understanding right now, is ephemeral. What exactly is moral naturalism and materialism? Is it relative, epistemic, analytic, metaphysical (just what I've pulled from some stanford encyclopedia of philosophy online which I don't know if is representative but will assume so for discussion purposes)? All of them equally, or with a hierarchy?

It's not that Aquinas is beyond reproach but rather a question on how do you critique a philosophy using one that grew out in part from his influence and writing? What axioms do you hold to that allow for that. I am not attempting to say this is a closed system, only to advocate for an equal comparison which I don't think exists with this specific example.

Heh, indeed there may be no significant difference in your example.....because both Charles Manson and David Koresh used (in part) unfalsifiable, supernatural claims to motivate their followers. Manson was heavily influenced by his interpretation of 60s counterculture and the Bible, and he used a bunch of religious and apocalyptic language to justify his actions. Dude thought he was a Christ-like figure sent to earth to start the race war and emerge as the leader of the NWO.

Again, the point here isn't that you can't find an example of secular fanaticism as bad as religious fanaticism. Of course such examples exist. But my assertion is that, on average, religious fanaticism is still more dangerous because 1. Belief in a divine authority or higher power is typically held with a higher degree of [typically unfalsifiable] conviction than a secular belief, 2. Belief in a divine authority or higher power, on average, is capable of motivating many, many more people to action than a secular belief, 3. Secular belief, on average, is more open to rational discussion and compromise than religious beliefs rooted in divine/supernatural authority.

And again, from a theoretical standpoint vis a vis the ease of disabusing people from silly notions, just consider for a moment what mechanisms you would use to demonstrate Koresh's belief that he was God's vessel put on earth to set up a polygamous Davidic kingdom in Jerusalem by way of Waco....is actually false. Versus say DPRK's claim to all the Juche folks that Kim Jong Il never defecated or urinated in his life.

I think we're going to start going in circles on our original argument because the fanaticism is the core (and likely just pathological) problem here. Whatever excuses or monikers they wish to drape themselves with is irrelevant and doesn't correlate with the ability to convince themselves otherwise. Especially when none of their premises can line up with the tenets of a major religion. Whether Manson called himself a "messiah" or "supreme badass" both are functionally, equally far from Christianity.

One might even say....America is not as great as it used to be and perhaps something needs to be done to return it to its previous state? 😉

In all seriousness, though, this is a terrible argument against secularism rooted mostly in a nostalgic mythos that idealizes post-war America as a time where traditional values reigned and societal bliss ensued. The reality is that the Normal Rockwell view of America is the pinnacle of selective memory. Tell me, what was happening to the pocketbooks and civil liberties of women, people of color, and LGBTQ people during the economic boom and reign of traditional values?

And as far as nuclear families, there's a strong argument to be made that that structure certainly wasn't in place in the 50s because of its explicit benefit to children. Ignoring for a second that children are capable of thriving in non-traditional family structures, nuclear families at that time existed mainly to reinforce traditional gender roles and restrict women's autonomy and opportunities. Women weren't making the choice to only stay home and raise children- they were essentially forced to.

Also, what actually were/are the rates of poverty and educational attainment in the 40s/50s compared to now? And even if they are lower now, you've mostly established there maybe is a correlation to the decline of "traditional" values. A causative argument is still wanting.

It really has nothing to do with an opinion on post-WWII America, but rather an attempt to use empirical evidence to demonstrate the moral implications of changing culture values. This would be an example of Epistemic Naturalism I believe.

Why would you make that commentary on the nuclear family? This is a uncharacteristically emotional claim IMO and curious if this is second wave feminism inspired?

Wait, what? Are you really saying immediate pre-Dark Ages Rome is a "fairly close" approximation of a "secular world?"

I'm talking about the Roman Republic, not the Roman Empire.

 

[vector2]

I don't really understand that quip because it makes all the difference in the world. If you don't "subscribe to a religion" then you have the responsibility to replace that value or moral system that religion provides with something else. Something that approaches the philisophical and metaphysical depth these religious institutions have done whether you agree with them or not. To place a neat package around them with a satirical bow just to completely discard it is naive because what you'd replace it with, to me in my understanding right now, is ephemeral. What exactly is moral naturalism and materialism? Is it relative, epistemic, analytic, metaphysical (just what I've pulled from some stanford encyclopedia of philosophy online which I don't know if is representative but will assume so for discussion purposes)? All of them equally, or with a hierarchy?

It's not that Aquinas is beyond reproach but rather a question on how do you critique a philosophy using one that grew out in part from his influence and writing? What axioms do you hold to that allow for that. I am not attempting to say this is a closed system, only to advocate for an equal comparison which I don't think exists with this specific example.

Read your second sentence in this first paragraph very carefully. "If you don't 'subscribe to a religion' then you have the responsibility to replace that value or moral system that religion provides us with something else."

It's interesting the way you phrase it, because you're attempting to pull off a semantic / logical trick that one can easily miss unless one is paying attention. See, you simply make two assumptions - without any evidentiary or logical basis - that 1. having religion is the base case, 2. something must exist to replace it, and then use those assumptions to state very authoritatively and prescriptively that ergo one has the "responsibility" to replace religion with something else.

Very sneaky. But if we back up a few steps, I'd first ask you: Why is religion the base case? Humans are not born with an understanding of religious tenets anymore than they are born with an understanding of nonlinear algebra. It's something that's taught. And then I'd ask you: Why must something replace it?

I think your inability to grasp the quip is probably related to the fact that you haven't thought too much about the distinctions between strong agnosticism, weak agnosticism, strong atheism, and weak atheism. Weak atheism is the actual base case of human beings, and the idea that something ephemeral has to replace it sounds mostly just like opinion.

I think we're going to start going in circles on our original argument because the fanaticism is the core (and likely just pathological) problem here. Whatever excuses or monikers they wish to drape themselves with is irrelevant and doesn't correlate with the ability to convince themselves otherwise. Especially when none of their premises can line up with the tenets of a major religion. Whether Manson called himself a "messiah" or "supreme badass" both are functionally, equally far from Christianity.

I mean, we're certainly going to go in circles if you don't actually respond to any of the specific points I made. Which, to belabor the point, is that while many types of fanatics exist, not all fanatics or types of fanaticism are equal. Believe it or not, things exist in degrees. You asked me to support the reason I believe religious fanaticism to be more dangerous, and I replied:

​

...that, on average, religious fanaticism is still more dangerous because 1. Belief in a divine authority or higher power is typically held with a higher degree of [typically unfalsifiable] conviction than a secular belief, 2. Belief in a divine authority or higher power, on average, is capable of motivating many, many more people to action than a secular belief, 3. Secular belief, on average, is more open to rational discussion and compromise than religious beliefs rooted in divine/supernatural authority.​

​

I don't think you've really substantively addressed or refuted any of those.

It really has nothing to do with an opinion on post-WWII America, but rather an attempt to use empirical evidence to demonstrate the moral implications of changing culture values. This would be an example of Epistemic Naturalism I believe.

Why would you make that commentary on the nuclear family? This is a uncharacteristically emotional claim IMO and curious if this is second wave feminism inspired?

It has nothing to do with your opinion on post-WWII America? That's a pretty strange statement considering you wrote "The extremely broad and ill-defined "American Left" ...has also pushed back hard on societal norms starting in the 1960s and continuing today. This makes up a shift in the zeitgeist that you referenced earlier and an acceleration of the "attack" if you will on traditionally Christian societal norms. Some broad objective evidence of a "worse" society have evolved from this"

I feel what you wrote reads pretty plainly as a defense of traditional values you considered more or less normative in the post-WWII era and as a criticism of the Left's subsequent pushback. And my point was simply that periods that seemed "ideal" or more "moral" usually have a seedy underbelly where plenty of immoral ongoings coexisted, therefore pointing to secularism's possible failings while ignoring the numerous things it improved from that era is not a fair criticism.

I'm talking about the Roman Republic, not the Roman Empire.

Wait, what???? Are you really saying immediate pre-Dark Ages Rome the Roman Republic is a "fairly close" approximation of a "secular world?"

 

[TexBlazer2106]

Read your second sentence in this first paragraph very carefully. "If you don't 'subscribe to a religion' then you have the responsibility to replace that value or moral system that religion provides us with something else."

It's interesting the way you phrase it, because you're attempting to pull off a semantic / logical trick that one can easily miss unless one is paying attention. See, you simply make two assumptions - without any evidentiary or logical basis - that 1. having religion is the base case, 2. something must exist to replace it, and then use those assumptions to state very authoritatively and prescriptively that ergo one has the "responsibility" to replace religion with something else.

Very sneaky. But if we back up a few steps, I'd first ask you: Why is religion the base case? Humans are not born with an understanding of religious tenets anymore than they are born with an understanding of nonlinear algebra. It's something that's taught. And then I'd ask you: Why must something replace it?

I think your inability to grasp the quip is probably related to the fact that you haven't thought too much about the distinctions between strong agnosticism, weak agnosticism, strong atheism, and weak atheism. Weak atheism is the actual base case of human beings, and the idea that something ephemeral has to replace it sounds mostly just like opinion.

Sure, religion is the base case because this is what we have guiding us now. You are very dismissive of something that has evolved in human society over millennia of human existence. Whether or not anyone agrees with why that is is largely irrelevant. It's easy to be dismissive of these types of beliefs while you still have the corpse of their tenets to base a moral quasi-standard on (which is what's going on today in the US) but what do you do in the vacuum of any of these tenets. How would you start?

This is the second time you've made an accusation of "sneakiness" in my arguments as if they're furtive. Let's address some of yours.

"Weak atheism is the actual base case of human beings."
"Secular belief, on average, is more open to rational discussion and compromise than religious beliefs rooted in divine/supernatural authority"

Don't be sneaky about your axioms, own them and build off them. Show me a supportive argument, show me a system that builds off this without first stealing from what has come before who's yoke you've discarded.

As far as gradations in agnosticism and atheism, sure I'm not familiar with those definitions. I can make some assumptions though starting with both of the strongs. Strong atheism and agnosticism will not lead you to a naturalism, they lead to nihilism, absurdism, with probably a strain of utilitarianism. These are the most logical secular moral beliefs systems that I've read.

...that, on average, religious fanaticism is still more dangerous because 1. Belief in a divine authority or higher power is typically held with a higher degree of [typically unfalsifiable] conviction than a secular belief, 2. Belief in a divine authority or higher power, on average, is capable of motivating many, many more people to action than a secular belief, 3. Secular belief, on average, is more open to rational discussion and compromise than religious beliefs rooted in divine/supernatural authority.

1 and 2 are the crux of your argument and I think they're worthy of a discussion. My exertion and yours really can't be proven outside of erasing all religious thought and history. Then in your multiverse you could run the experiment. But then that's your ideal correct? Turn the weak atheism axiom into a strong one? If there is no responsibility to force a replacement would you be satisfied with whatever came after even if it was dystopian? Sometimes your arguments suggest that you actually are a theist, that your god is "The Rational Man"

I feel what you wrote reads pretty plainly as a defense of traditional values you considered more or less normative in the post-WWII era and as a criticism of the Left's subsequent pushback. And my point was simply that periods that seemed "ideal" or more "moral" usually have a seedy underbelly where plenty of immoral ongoings coexisted, therefore pointing to secularism's possible failings while ignoring the numerous things it improved from that era is not a fair criticism.

Fair that I represented the immediate pre-60s time as ideal but it wasn't intended that way, it was just part of the example used. Really some of the core tenets came under attack when Woodrow Wilson became president and started building the foundation of the current federal government. If you read some of his writings you'll see he despised the common man and advocated for a centralized, agnostic bureaucracy that would intrinsically know whats right just by cold logic.

Wait, what???? Are you really saying immediate pre-Dark Ages Rome the Roman Republic is a "fairly close" approximation of a "secular world?"

Again, yes. The strong hellenistic influence and birth of the stoics around this time focused on science, man's achievements and naturalism. The roman gods weren't thought of much especially when Julius Caesar was raiding the temple coffers.

 

[vector2]

Sure, religion is the base case because this is what we have guiding us now. You are very dismissive of something that has evolved in human society over millennia of human existence. Whether or not anyone agrees with why that is is largely irrelevant. It's easy to be dismissive of these types of beliefs while you still have the corpse of their tenets to base a moral quasi-standard on (which is what's going on today in the US) but what do you do in the vacuum of any of these tenets. How would you start?

I'm sorry, but I point out that you are making unvalidated, unsupported assumptions and are just running with them to make unjustified conclusions.....and your response to that is to lead strong again with some vague, blanket unsupported statement like "religion is the base case because this is what we have guiding us now." Could you be any more non-specific?

Who is us, here? You and me? Everyone west of the Mississippi? All Americans? All humans? Any concerns that maybe your Western-centric, Aquinian approach implying that literally all moral systems spanning all the world and all of time simply must be derived from your chosen tenets is maybe... just maybe a bit too narrow?

And the idea that propensity to religion being an evolved trait somehow makes its truthiness more true is a fallacy. Envisioning the concept of a "deity" requires abstract thought. Envisioning the concept of a "corporation" requires abstract thought. Envisioning the concept of a "nation" requires abstract thought. The ability to engage in abstract thinking using concepts that can unite large groups of people is extraordinarily advantageous from an evolutionary perspective. But deities are likely not physical entities any more than corporations are physical entities. Not to mention, another thing that's advantageous from an evolutionarily standpoint is the ability for curious, problem-solving apes to come up with explanations for natural phenomena....even if those explanations are wrong. If you want to point to propensity for supernatural beliefs as evidence of the veracity (rather than utility) of religion, then I hope you're prepared to acknowledge the veracity of a whole bunch of beliefs which you surely reject.

Furthermore, with regard to the idea that everything in secular moral systems is cribbed from your idealized religious morals, have you considered for a moment that the much more parsimonious explanation is that certain mutually beneficial human behaviors with totally naturalistic causation were evolutionarily advantageous....and religions simply cribbed these behaviors as having divine guidance?

This is the second time you've made an accusation of "sneakiness" in my arguments as if they're furtive. Let's address some of yours.

"Weak atheism is the actual base case of human beings."
"Secular belief, on average, is more open to rational discussion and compromise than religious beliefs rooted in divine/supernatural authority"

Don't be sneaky about your axioms, own them and build off them. Show me a supportive argument, show me a system that builds off this without first stealing from what has come before who's yoke you've discarded.

As far as gradations in agnosticism and atheism, sure I'm not familiar with those definitions. I can make some assumptions though starting with both of the strongs. Strong atheism and agnosticism will not lead you to a naturalism, they lead to nihilism, absurdism, with probably a strain of utilitarianism. These are the most logical secular moral beliefs systems that I've read.

Maybe it's because you decided to semi-necrobump this thread after two months of no replies, but let me refresh you as to what I said about axioms:

...everyone starts with unprovable axioms as the basis for those systems. For instance, regardless of whether an atheist or a theist believes the statement "human beings ought not murder other human beings," there's no empirical or logical or mathematical proof which makes it so. Which means you might think you can use reason to "know better," but your "better" is entirely subjective.​

I've made absolutely no secret of the fact that I think at the base of any moral or ethical system are going to be some beliefs or assertions which are essentially unprovable, so it's a bit silly to suggest that I was ever sneaky about their necessity.

But moving on, let me define weak (negative) atheism for you. Because it's relevant to the statement I made earlier that "Humans are not born with an understanding of religious tenets anymore than they are born with an understanding of nonlinear algebra."

"Positive" atheists explicitly assert that it is false that any deities exist. "Negative" atheists assert they do not believe any deities exist, but do not necessarily explicitly assert it is true that no deity exists.

Negative and positive atheism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Babies and children too young to have complex abstract thought are weak/negative atheists. My almost-3 year old doesn't really have a conception of god, but he also doesn't explicitly assert that god doesn't exist. And yet he's capable of what is arguably complex, moral, empathetic, introspective behavior when he selflessly shares with a distraught classmate whose toy broke or when he gets in trouble at home. This is what I'm referring to when I say weak atheism is the base case. My 3 year old's "base case" is the state of not knowing anything about religion (+ not knowing anything about nonlinear algebra).

1 and 2 are the crux of your argument and I think they're worthy of a discussion. My exertion and yours really can't be proven outside of erasing all religious thought and history. Then in your multiverse you could run the experiment. But then that's your ideal correct? Turn the weak atheism axiom into a strong one? If there is no responsibility to force a replacement would you be satisfied with whatever came after even if it was dystopian?

I have no interest in being a strong atheist. Which is to say, I have no interest in definitively stating "god" doesn't exist anymore than I care about stating that Russel's teapot or Santa Claus definitively don't exist. Furthermore, I think, in part, that the very terminology itself is suspect, difficult to define, and so non-specific as to make it almost unparseable.

Sometimes your arguments suggest that you actually are a theist, that your god is "The Rational Man"

This is a nonsense statement that theists (who, like you, don't really have a good grasp on positive/negative agnoticism or atheism) use to falsely imply that non-believers are monoliths who go around making assertions about how empiricism is objectively better or how god definitively doesn't exist. It's a strawman that doesn't really exist in realm of serious skeptic thought.

Fair that I represented the immediate pre-60s time as ideal but it wasn't intended that way, it was just part of the example used. Really some of the core tenets came under attack when Woodrow Wilson became president and started building the foundation of the current federal government. If you read some of his writings you'll see he despised the common man and advocated for a centralized, agnostic bureaucracy that would intrinsically know whats right just by cold logic.

Sure, but I don't think your additional example really rebuts the notion that in fact there never was some idealized time when morals were great until the Left started ruining everything.

Again, yes. The strong hellenistic influence and birth of the stoics around this time focused on science, man's achievements and naturalism. The roman gods weren't thought of much especially when Julius Caesar was raiding the temple coffers.

Your original statement was that "It's more of a comment that such a secular world existed before (maybe not completely how you would describe it, but fairly close I think) today's current scientific advancements and that there are lessons that could be learned there. "

I would say that while Rome certainly had some secular'ish aspects, using a society that incorporated (among numerous, numerous other religious aspects) an Imperial cult to deify Emperors and worship them as divinities after their death... as a "fairly close" comparison to the modern secular world... is maybe not the most accurate.

 

[TexBlazer2106]

I'm not sure why you would introduce both weak and strong atheists and agnostics when a weak atheist is defines as an agnostic. I also don't know what a toddler's immature functionality proves. If Tarzan existed do you think he would selflessly share with another human he just met? If so, would he therefore be agnostic or just unable to define what exactly drives him to do what he does?

I took a very long time because I'm busy and wanted to give my reply to the conversation due consideration. Thank you for referencing an earlier statement, it is helpful. It's also taking a while because I'm having a really hard time understanding just what structure you operate on. Like trying to grab an eddy in a creek and spinning off 2 or 3 more similar yet very different ones.

I'd like to hear some common ground here from which to continue on because it's swirled away every time I've thought I've found it. Especially if you want to use a statement like, "I point out that you are making unvalidated, unsupported assumptions and are just running with them to make unjustified conclusions.....and your response to that is to lead strong again with some vague, blanket unsupported statement like..." What validated, supported assumptions have you made in this conversation? Do you think,

1. Belief in a divine authority or higher power is typically held with a higher degree of [typically unfalsifiable] conviction than a secular belief, 2. Belief in a divine authority or higher power, on average, is capable of motivating many, many more people to action than a secular belief, 3. Secular belief, on average, is more open to rational discussion and compromise than religious beliefs rooted in divine/supernatural authority.

are supported statements? You spent one sentence earlier dismissing Stalin's atrocities "we all know he's just a man," and we haven't even gotten to the Third Reich yet. Are you next going to say that the Mein Kampf shares similarities with other "messianic types?"

I'd like to find some common ground in which we discourse the merits of systems of beliefs and moral structure. I'd like to know what axioms you uphold. I'd like to know why you think humans shouldn't kill each other and after you've answered that question pretend that I asked why again.

Because what's concerning to me is a common vein running in most of your issues with what I've presented (including your latest derision above) can be traced to the "god of the gaps" argument of Nietzsche's, see below (x2, in the first you've presumed)

Not to mention, another thing that's advantageous from an evolutionarily standpoint is the ability for curious, problem-solving apes to come up with explanations for natural phenomena....even if those explanations are wrong. If you want to point to propensity for supernatural beliefs as evidence of the veracity (rather than utility) of religion, then I hope you're prepared to acknowledge the veracity of a whole bunch of beliefs which you surely reject.

Furthermore, with regard to the idea that everything in secular moral systems is cribbed from your idealized religious morals, have you considered for a moment that the much more parsimonious explanation is that certain mutually beneficial human behaviors with totally naturalistic causation were evolutionarily advantageous....and religions simply cribbed these behaviors as having divine guidance?

Honestly, I was taken aback by your assertion that you have no desire to be as strong atheist because I've assumed you've declared gott ist tot.

This [Sometimes your arguments suggest that you actually are a theist, that your god is "The Rational Man"] is a nonsense statement that theists (who, like you, don't really have a good grasp on positive/negative agnoticism or atheism) use to falsely imply that non-believers are monoliths who go around making assertions about how empiricism is objectively better or how god definitively doesn't exist. It's a strawman that doesn't really exist in realm of serious skeptic thought.

Are you a post-modernist? Give me some idea. Sometimes I think you are Sam Harris and other times his opposite.

Finally, I think you should drop the the critique of my Roman Republic as you can't differentiate it from the Roman Empire.

 

[TexBlazer2106]

but it should be plainly obvious that someone motivated to a particular action because of his belief in the unfalsifiable, omnipotent, omniscient creator of the universe is probably going to be less persuadable than some guy motivated to a particular belief by his neighbor Jeff. Because it's empirically demonstrable that Jeff is fallible. Not so much with YHWH.

This is a summary of your hypothesis which is a fine theory but far from incontrovertible proof. There's not a way to prove it true other than to completely remove the concept of religion and history from people today and then study the new population and see if their are the same frequencies of fanaticism or not (although you'd have to have some sort of accepted moral standard based on something to even define an atrocity). This is impossible and not a test I'd put on your theory. I'm sure there are other ways to study such things from isolated cultures and either observing them or understanding their history. However you can't ascribe every mention or thread of supernatural as the "unfalsifiable by nature of belief" primary motive of the fanatic. Either way I think its hypocritical to accuse me of offering "making unvalidated, unsupported assumptions and ... running with them to make unjustified conclusions," when there's no real proof being offered by your arguments, just theories.

To be very clear, it's not objectively superior to ascribe to secular axioms which originate solely from the human mind vs ascribing to axioms which are claimed to originate from God or Allah or Brahma or Zeus. I just subjectively think it's better if we all ascribed to the former because then I don't have to argue with someone who thinks the infallible literal creator of the universe wrote them a specific guide on how to comport themselves.

Looking back this is another, tacit, support for Nietzsche. I understand what you're saying here and that you aren't attempting to anything other than to give your opinion, but still you'd like to see it come to fruition. And to come to fruition you have to kill god, make him obsolete, a useful tool for the unenlightened now no longer needed. Then what do you do? You swirled away before from making any statements on society should proceed, how to emerge from the so called tyranny of religious tenets.
--this is mostly rhetorical, I'm not trying to tie the validity of your arguments regarding fanaticism even though I've talked a lot about it because I see it as the natural extent of your arguments. I disagree with your main points but I don't think there's any way that either of us can prove it.

I do have concerns on how you'd potentially reconcile these different secular morality structures and I've brought them up before (nihilism, absurdism, naturalism/materialism, etc) but if you mainly hold a postmodernism view of morality then really its a whole different conversation.


P.s

Prehistoric human beings thrived and multiplied due to our ability to 1. Engage in clever, abstract thought which allowed us to create useful things no animal had before 2. Cooperate in family units and in ever-increasingly large multi-family groups. Compassion, love, respect, patience, and not stealing from or wantonly murdering everyone are emotions and behaviors that can be selected for through naturalistic means. (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari is a pretty interesting read on this very topic)

Ignoring for a second that children are capable of thriving in non-traditional family structures, nuclear families at that time existed mainly to reinforce traditional gender roles and restrict women's autonomy and opportunities.

Not sure how you reconcile these ideas, are you arguing that family units/nuclear family are vestigial?

 

[vector2]

I'm not sure why you would introduce both weak and strong atheists and agnostics when a weak atheist is defines as an agnostic. I also don't know what a toddler's immature functionality proves. If Tarzan existed do you think he would selflessly share with another human he just met? If so, would he therefore be agnostic or just unable to define what exactly drives him to do what he does?

First of all, there's a distinct (but sometimes overlapping) difference between strong atheism, weak atheism, strong agnosticism, and weak agnosticism, and they're generally defined as follows:

​

Strong agnosticism: the view that the question of the existence or nonexistence of god(s) are unknowable by nature or that human beings are ill-equipped to judge the evidence.​

​

Weak agnosticism: the view that the existence or nonexistence of god(s) is currently unknown but is not necessarily unknowable, therefore one will withhold judgment until/if more evidence is available.​

​

Strong atheism: the view that explicitly asserts that deities do not exist​

​

Weak atheism: the view of not having any belief in any deities but also not explicitly asserting that deities definitively do not exist​

​

Agnostics fall within the realm of weak atheism but the converse is not necessarily true. The distinction lies in the fact that agnostics are making specific judgements about "knowing" (the epistemology of god) whereas weak atheism does not necessarily entail such judgements. For instance, if I'm a weak atheist who's also a theological noncognitivist then I'm not really an agnostic....because I don't think "god" is defined precisely enough (or even able to be defined precisely enough) to even begin wondering whether knowledge of his or her or its existence is worth pondering about.

That brings me to my second point. We were discussing what is humanity's "base case" vis a vis religion. Which to me means the case of children is relevant because one can see the base condition of what humans possess when born, and how they develop from there (this is obviously not a new concept for anyone who has ever heard of Descartes and Locke). If a small child starts out cognitively immature, then it means that beliefs and ideas - including religious beliefs - are acquired through experiences, upbringing, education, socialization, etc. Ergo, to the belabor the point, it seems obvious that weak atheism is the base case for humans. Just like "a-linearalgebraicism" is.

I took a very long time because I'm busy and wanted to give my reply to the conversation due consideration. Thank you for referencing an earlier statement, it is helpful. It's also taking a while because I'm having a really hard time understanding just what structure you operate on. Like trying to grab an eddy in a creek and spinning off 2 or 3 more similar yet very different ones.

I'd like to hear some common ground here from which to continue on because it's swirled away every time I've thought I've found it. Especially if you want to use a statement like, "I point out that you are making unvalidated, unsupported assumptions and are just running with them to make unjustified conclusions.....and your response to that is to lead strong again with some vague, blanket unsupported statement like..." What validated, supported assumptions have you made in this conversation? Do you think,

are supported statements? You spent one sentence earlier dismissing Stalin's atrocities "we all know he's just a man," and we haven't even gotten to the Third Reich yet. Are you next going to say that the Mein Kampf shares similarities with other "messianic types?"

I'd like to find some common ground in which we discourse the merits of systems of beliefs and moral structure. I'd like to know what axioms you uphold. I'd like to know why you think humans shouldn't kill each other and after you've answered that question pretend that I asked why again.

If I may say so, I think it's a bit disingenuous and inaccurate to portray my lengthy posts in this thread about religious vs secular fanaticism as a trite one-liner. And with regard to statements being supported, I'm not going to provide a citation for statements which are seemingly plainly obvious on their face.

Honestly, when I look at what I wrote about belief in the divine [as compared to a secular belief] being, on average, of generally higher conviction, able to motivate many, many more people, and when I look at what I said about secular beliefs being, on average, more open to rational discussions and change, I wouldn't have dreamed that anyone thought those statements controversial.

Do you really need a citation that there are 2.2 billion Christians and 1.8 billion Muslims in the world? Do you really need a citation that the order of conviction for hundreds of millions of theists is "God, Family, Country" or some variation thereof? Do you need a citation that the idea that Jesus, a literal man, was literally born of a literal virgin birth hasn't changed in 2000 years, whereas the second the Inquisition let loose its grip on the position of the Earth and Sun the field of astronomy exploded and evolved? Do you need a citation that the ethically challenging portions of the U.S. Code are easier to amend than the challenging portions of the canonical gospels?

Because what's concerning to me is a common vein running in most of your issues with what I've presented (including your latest derision above) can be traced to the "god of the gaps" argument of Nietzsche's, see below (x2, in the first you've presumed)

Honestly, I was taken aback by your assertion that you have no desire to be as strong atheist because I've assumed you've declared gott ist tot.

Are you a post-modernist? Give me some idea. Sometimes I think you are Sam Harris and other times his opposite.

Ignoring for a moment the fact that the debate and thought around the concept of "god of the gaps" extends much more broadly than just Nietzsche's original statements, what's concerning to me is that you never actually answered why my "god of the gaps" challenge to your [paraphrasing] "religion has been around for a long time and is really popular/ubiquitous ergo it's the base case and the valid moral standard" argument is invalid.

Regarding your surprise, if I were to guess I think you'd prefer to place me squarely in some Nietzschean strong atheism gott ist tot all hail the ubermensch rational man....because it's a lot easier to argue against a delineated pigeonholed belief. Ultimately, I don't think there is a neat "ism" that describes all of my beliefs or lack of beliefs. Some of that is due to complexity and some of that is because I haven't had time to read all of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to see what I think makes sense and what doesn't. I'm inspired by many Enlightenment and original empiricist thinkers. But I also think there are some worthwhile aspects to post-modernism. I probably read most of Dawkins' and Harris' books, and I generally agree with Harris' take on the importance of secularism and empiricism, but I diverge with him a bit vis a vis his take on moral realism. But if you want to pin me down a bit, I think what I said earlier about being a weak atheist with a grain of theological noncognitivism (+- apathy to even thinking about god(s) existence) isn't incredibly far off the mark.

Finally, I think you should drop the the critique of my Roman Republic as you can't differentiate it from the Roman Empire.

I think you need to more precisely elucidate what you're saying, because I'm fairly confident I'm not the only one who doesn't know what you're talking about at this point.

 

[vector2]

This is a summary of your hypothesis which is a fine theory but far from incontrovertible proof. There's not a way to prove it true other than to completely remove the concept of religion and history from people today and then study the new population and see if their are the same frequencies of fanaticism or not (although you'd have to have some sort of accepted moral standard based on something to even define an atrocity). This is impossible and not a test I'd put on your theory. I'm sure there are other ways to study such things from isolated cultures and either observing them or understanding their history. However you can't ascribe every mention or thread of supernatural as the "unfalsifiable by nature of belief" primary motive of the fanatic. Either way I think its hypocritical to accuse me of offering "making unvalidated, unsupported assumptions and ... running with them to make unjustified conclusions," when there's no real proof being offered by your arguments, just theories.

It seems you're keen to throw that "making unvalidated, unsupported..." line back in my face, but I would venture to say that you're not really going about it in a particularly compelling way. First of all, the paragraph you quoted without context was preceded by a paragraph that had relevant supporting information in it. Before I said the line about "....it should be plainly obvious that belief in X.....is probably...," I stated:

One, because plenty of fundamentalist religions, by design, don't change their minds on pretty much anything, and two, even if a change is made, the new conditions (depending on the religion) still exist in a state in which the ultimate authority is derived from a supernatural source (e.g. think divine revelation and how that relates to the Catholic magisterium, the Church's supposed infallibility, etc).​

Those are empirically verifiable statements which support my opinion / hypothesis. Which OF COURSE was just an opinion / hypothesis. Lol, why oh why -- given my almost pathologic propensity to hedge everything -- would you even pretend that I would believe that that line of mine you quoted was incontrovertible proof?

And second of all, the comparison you're making here between the statement of mine you quoted and the one of yours I took issue with is absurd. Let's be clear here. Your line of argumentation I took issue with started with an unsupported assertion that "If you don't "subscribe to a religion" then you have the responsibility to replace that value or moral system that religion provides with something else," continued with another unsupported assertion that "religion is the base case [for all of humanity] because this is what is guiding us now," and then further ran with two more specious arguments stating its longevity speaks to its veracity and that every other moral system is simply a ripoff of religious morality.

On the other hand, what did I say? I said that it's plainly obvious that a person motivated by belief in an infinitely powerful and knowledgeable authority that he holds dear will probably be less persuadable than someone motivated by some fallible nobody next door.

Are we really, really going to argue here that both of the statements are making the same degree of sweeping claims and require the same degree of proof? Should I also provide proof that kids are more likely to be persuaded by their parents than by a stranger? I don't know if you're trying to be obtuse here, but it's certainly on the differential.

Looking back this is another, tacit, support for Nietzsche. I understand what you're saying here and that you aren't attempting to anything other than to give your opinion, but still you'd like to see it come to fruition. And to come to fruition you have to kill god, make him obsolete, a useful tool for the unenlightened now no longer needed. Then what do you do? You swirled away before from making any statements on society should proceed, how to emerge from the so called tyranny of religious tenets.
--this is mostly rhetorical, I'm not trying to tie the validity of your arguments regarding fanaticism even though I've talked a lot about it because I see it as the natural extent of your arguments. I disagree with your main points but I don't think there's any way that either of us can prove it.

There you go again trying to put things into neat little (in this case, Nietzschean) boxes. More generally, what I wrote about objective vs. subjective superiority of secular vs. religious axioms isn't anything particularly specific to Nietzsche and killing god and blah blah blah. It's just specific to some vague form of philosophical relativism. I know that word probably sets off alarm bells when theists hear it, but just realize that relativism is not the monolith that the folks who enjoy creating "ah ha! he's a relativist so he thinks murder is ethical!" strawmen think it is.

Not sure how you reconcile these ideas, are you arguing that family units/nuclear family are vestigial?

Notice that in the first part of my post you quoted it says: "Cooperate in family units and in ever-increasingly large multi-family groups."

Notice that it does not say prehistoric hominids (or modern-day indigenous / aborigines for that matter) had to "Cooperate in 1 husband, 1 wife, 2.3 kids, 1.4 dogs traditional nuclear family units"

There is no contradiction to reconcile here.

 

[TexBlazer2106]

- I think you're making an assumption that an adult's mind would be the same as a child absent any outside influence and I don't see that to be necessarily true and I haven't read those guys enough to know their thoughts.

-Sure my one line summary is casual, but how can you accuse me of disingenuity when you've made plenty of casual claims upon history, motives and ideas. You summed up the Spanish Inquisition (or at least implied its primary motive) in two sentences or less, made an outrageous claim that part of the purpose of the "traditional nuclear family" concept was to "...restrict women's autonomy and opportunities" and had the temerity to shrug off a contradiction (not a particularly important one to the conversation but still one you could have just ignored) with a trite comment that you weren't referring to cavemen following a modern day ideal.

-to your god of the gaps question as to why anything needs to be filled with a god, I have clarify a couple of different definitions. My understanding is that there's a god of the gaps as what was used earlier to critique Aquinas' theory of spheres of reasoning (revealed, deducted, and both) where the divine is essentially ignorance given form. This is really no different than any kind of direct challenge to be provided whatever kind of proof you (speaking generically) need at that moment in time. It's a commentary directly against divine revelation. If you're using the god of gaps as a critique against the idea that a belief or supposition not divinely revealed or empirically rationalized must therefore be from god then I think that is fine. If you are trying to somehow tie that into my earlier statement asking for a moral/ethical standard (that doesn't have religious roots) anyone would use to supplant the moral values as laid out in the Catholic Catechism, you're off base.

-I'm going to sum up my original argument as succinctly as I can, "someone who is following the core tenets of Christianity is no more capable of fanatical acts than an atheist if you control for mental illness." "Christianity" was not something I originally stated, but it was one I was thinking of but did not state.

- Thank you for sharing your insights. I do not need a clear definition of your personal belief system, just seeking to understand where your insights come from.

 

[vector2]

- I think you're making an assumption that an adult's mind would be the same as a child absent any outside influence and I don't see that to be necessarily true and I haven't read those guys enough to know their thoughts.

No such assumption is being made. Because one can't entirely separate an adult's mind from a child's mind given that [obviously] all adult minds developed from a child's mind. You also don't need to have read about tabula rasa to understand what I said, which to reiterate is:

​

If a small child starts out cognitively immature, then it means that beliefs and ideas - including religious beliefs - are acquired through experiences, upbringing, education, socialization, etc. Ergo, to the belabor the point, it seems obvious that weak atheism is the base case for humans. Just like "a-linearalgebraicism" is.​

I am plainly asserting that we're not born with knowledge of religious ideas any more than we're born with a knowledge of mathematics.

-Sure my one line summary is casual, but how can you accuse me of disingenuity when you've made plenty of casual claims upon history, motives and ideas. You summed up the Spanish Inquisition (or at least implied its primary motive) in two sentences or less, made an outrageous claim that part of the purpose of the "traditional nuclear family" concept was to "...restrict women's autonomy and opportunities" and had the temerity to shrug off a contradiction (not a particularly important one to the conversation but still one you could have just ignored) with a trite comment that you weren't referring to cavemen following a modern day ideal.

I think it's sad that we're arrived at the point where you're trying to cherry pick or distort phrases from an absolute wall-of-text worth of posts just to try to find some gotcha which imo will never compare in scope to the unsupported whopper you laid on us with the "If you don't "subscribe to a religion" then you have the responsibility to replace that value or moral system that religion provides with something else," followed by "religion is the base case [for all of humanity] because this is what is guiding us now," line followed by the specious arguments stating religion's longevity speaks to its veracity and that every other moral system is simply a ripoff of religious morality.

And with regard to disingenuity, I think it's ongoing if you're going to use words like "summed up" or "implied its primary motive" in relation to what I said about the Inquisition, which was "...whereas the second the Inquisition let loose its grip on the position of the Earth and Sun the field of astronomy exploded and evolved." First, I'm talking about the Roman Inquisition, not Spanish, as that was the one concerned primarily with Galileo, and second, there is no explicit or implicit statement in that phrase about the whole sum or the primary motive of the Inquisition there, so I don't know why you'd state as such. What I said is merely a narrow factual observation, and the implication is that the stifling of scientific knowledge / advancement was a side effect of strict adherence to religious orthodoxy. The primary motive, however mistaken, for those leading the Inquisition was ironically preservation of knowledge (by way of persecuting heretics deviating from said knowledge).

Continuing on with the disingenuity, why would you say "outrageous claim" about my statement regarding traditional nuclear families? If someone were reading your cherry picked phrasing and not my original post, they might think I stated what I stated as some kind of indisputable fact. Whereas if they were to go back to the original paragraph, it actually started out "And as far as nuclear families, there's a strong argument to be made that that structure certainly wasn't in place in the 50s for the benefit of...." The implication from the bolded being that that statement is not without controversy, and that I'm willing to back it up with evidence if so queried. And as far as being "outrageous," just LOL if you're unwilling to entertain the notion that social structures of the 40s and 50s restricted autonomy and opportunities for women.

With regard to shrugging off the contradiction, I'll again maintain that there was no contradiction there. You are reading too much into the words "family units" using your pre-existing biases, and indeed, it's upon you to show that just the words "family units" in the pre-historic context is synonymous with the "nuclear families at the time [1950s US]." But good luck with that....because have you read much about how childrearing works in hunter-gatherer societies? Hint: it doesn't happen a la the 1950s nuclear family model.

. If you are trying to somehow tie that into my earlier statement asking for a moral/ethical standard (that doesn't have religious roots) anyone would use to supplant the moral values as laid out in the Catholic Catechism, you're off base.

Essentially what I'm saying is your statement that [paraphrasing] religion has been around for a long time and is really popular/ubiquitous ergo it's the base case and the valid moral standard...is a god of the gaps argument. Akin to how creationists use god erroneously to explain the physical characteristics of man, Aquinian theologians use god to presumptively explain how complex morals / ethics / social behaviors arose in man.

I'll be the first to admit I don't know the answer, but I think theories which revolve around kindness, empathy, cooperation, and teamwork arising from natural selection and thus being evolutionarily more advantageous seem much more parsimonious.

-I'm going to sum up my original argument as succinctly as I can, "someone who is following the core tenets of Christianity is no more capable of fanatical acts than an atheist if you control for mental illness." "Christianity" was not something I originally stated, but it was one I was thinking of but did not state.

Sure, I understand your argument and I disagree with the conclusion. Cause really, I think we're just talking past each other at this point if you're not going to engage on the specifics of the average conviction, prevalence, and fungibility of religious vs secular beliefs.


e:

Yuval Noah Harari laying it out better than me about why a human's "base case" is so relatively absent and moldable

 

[TexBlazer2106]

Alright so I won't be taking most of your statements to mean what they seem to come off as. Despite disclaimers in front of statements, sometimes they read like assertions of fact which I often found presumptuous.

I'm just now realizing you think my assertion and request regarding religious morals is your big "gotcha." My initial statement was really a request, again, for a formative actionable secular moral system that I could go to and have my moral quandary's guided. I'm seeing now how that set of red flags for someone with your values and have been focusing on it since. Then I went along with your "base case" assumption which I didn't understand and I'm catching up to how much importance you've placed on it.
--Of course humans are born as moldable as described. Thank you for referencing something that sets humanity apart from animals, I definitely hold people to higher standards. I know you don't think we're automatons that come out of societal factories and are capable of independent thought and reasoning. It's why I don't really get your insistence on an individuals humans are automatons to religious doctrine. Do you not think that humans have rebelled against common thought as old as recorded history?
--I don't understand how you think institutions that have survived over 2 millenium don't have some sort of validity based on their sustainability. What better proof can you ask for? How old is the phrase "survived the test of time?" To me its obvious that there is something there that everyone must acknowledge. We only can argue about what that is.
--If you see my last reply I know understand that your problem with my original statement is some sort of "god of gaps" theory. Its a similar tactic I used as a child to first accuse my siblings to deflect incoming recriminations. Because really, is there any weaker argument out there than "I don't know how your making things up brother Bob, I'm just convinced you are."

I love the word parsimonious and thank you for bringing it into the conversation. I find it interesting that you lead with kindness though. When you went through your medical studies and finished with Anesthesia residency and then fellowship, did you find your most kind teachers to be your best ones?

Again, again I ask you, what can you say about secular morals obvious end? You have yet to comment on the nihilism seduction that must exist in every secularist's mind. I've suspended my previous conclusions and have walked that madness and find it to be irresistible if I'd not otherwise awakened to something more.

Thank you again for this conversation. I've found it stimulating.

 

[vector2]

Alright so I won't be taking most of your statements to mean what they seem to come off as. Despite disclaimers in front of statements, sometimes they read like assertions of fact which I often found presumptuous.

I would suggest to take my statements for what they actually say, instead of assuming that I have some hidden assertion or conviction that was not plainly said. I choose my words carefully, and if I mean to state something as a fact rather than an opinion or something controversial then it's usually pretty obvious

I'm just now realizing you think my assertion and request regarding religious morals is your big "gotcha." My initial statement was really a request, again, for a formative actionable secular moral system that I could go to and have my moral quandary's guided. I'm seeing now how that set of red flags for someone with your values and have been focusing on it since. Then I went along with your "base case" assumption which I didn't understand and I'm catching up to how much importance you've placed on it.

I find it interesting that you characterize what I wrote here:

...your unsupported assertion that "If you don't "subscribe to a religion" then you have the responsibility to replace that value or moral system that religion provides with something else," continued with another unsupported assertion that "religion is the base case [for all of humanity] because this is what is guiding us now," and then further ran with two more specious arguments stating its longevity speaks to its veracity and that every other moral system is simply a ripoff of religious morality.​

as a "big 'gotcha'."

As before, you're keen to throw a line back in my face, but just like before with your accusation that we've equally made "unsupported assertions," you're about an order of magnitude off in the equivalence you're implying exists here vis a vis "gotchas."

I took substantive issue with an overarching, unifying assumption you made and with a bunch of corollaries/conclusions that stemmed from it.

You, otoh, ctrl-F'ed through an absolute wall of text to cherry pick out-of-context statements of mine to show how you thought they were unsupported, including ones where the prefacing language was anything but definitive in tone.

Only one of these things is a "gotcha"

--Of course humans are born as moldable as described. Thank you for referencing something that sets humanity apart from animals, I definitely hold people to higher standards. I know you don't think we're automatons that come out of societal factories and are capable of independent thought and reasoning. It's why I don't really get your insistence on an individuals humans are automatons to religious doctrine. Do you not think that humans have rebelled against common thought as old as recorded history?

Your argument here is a bit of a motte-and-bailey fallacy. My statement that "...beliefs and ideas - including religious beliefs - are acquired through experiences, upbringing, education, socialization, etc." is the motte, and your characterization that, in essence, all I said was "humans are automatons [wrt religion]" is the bailey.

I get it, though. The idea that adult human beings arrive at their adulthood religious beliefs because of their superb thought and reasoning has certainly got to be a seductive hypothesis for an Aquinian theist. However, religious beliefs, just like a million other unconsidered preferences and beliefs that children have which survive to adulthood, typically come from.....your parents.

So to reiterate, humans have no "base case" (i.e. no default religion at birth), and then by 12th grade a whopping ~90% of us have the same or mostly the same religious beliefs as our parents. So either the average Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Scientologist high school senior is a well-read amateur philosopher/theologian who has carefully considered metaphysics before coincidentally ascribing truth to the same religious beliefs as his parents......or maybe, just maybe, parents program their kids a bit and kids go with it because they implicitly trust their parents?

--I don't understand how you think institutions that have survived over 2 millenium don't have some sort of validity based on their sustainability. What better proof can you ask for? How old is the phrase "survived the test of time?" To me its obvious that there is something there that everyone must acknowledge. We only can argue about what that is.

Dude, c'mon. Surely, surely, you see the fallacious nature of "it's been around a long time so therefore it must be valid" arguments. The fallacy is so common there's even a name for it: Appeal to Tradition or argumentum ad antiquitatem

Shall we look at some other institutions and practices that people believed in which survived centuries, millenia, or more?

-Slavery
-Segregation
-Child labor
-Child marriage
-Honor killings

And let's not forget that Hinduism is 4000 years old and Buddhism is 2500 years old. I guess their age and longevity alone must make them more valid than Christianity, right?

There are ideas which have significant longevity which are valid and invalid and ideas that are brand spankin' new which are valid or invalid. Ultimately, the age of the idea does not speak definitively to its veracity.

--If you see my last reply I know understand that your problem with my original statement is some sort of "god of gaps" theory. Its a similar tactic I used as a child to first accuse my siblings to deflect incoming recriminations. Because really, is there any weaker argument out there than "I don't know how your making things up brother Bob, I'm just convinced you are."

I can't really parse what you're trying to say here. Maybe it relates to you not really having laid out your axioms specifically. For instance, do you find the assertion that "complex morals / ethics / social behaviors arose in man...because [Judeo-Christian God]" to be axiomatically true? Are you axiomatically closed to empiric and/or scientific theories from evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology which try to elucidate how complex behavior can arise through natural selection? Do you believe that Homo sapiens evolved from apes in the first place?

I love the word parsimonious and thank you for bringing it into the conversation. I find it interesting that you lead with kindness though. When you went through your medical studies and finished with Anesthesia residency and then fellowship, did you find your most kind teachers to be your best ones?

I don't find it particularly interesting that I led with kindness. I picked a hodgepodge of attributes that specifically related to my earlier assertion that complex human behavior / emotions / morals / ethics can be postulated to arise through natural selection. For instance, where you perhaps see "kindness" as only being able to be inspired by the divine, I think about it through the lens of the cognitive revolution 70,000-30,000 years ago where small bands of hunter-gatherers realized they could probably kill much larger game and feed more people if they showed the "kindness" to simply not kill each other immediately...and instead work together.

Again, again I ask you, what can you say about secular morals obvious end? You have yet to comment on the nihilism seduction that must exist in every secularist's mind. I've suspended my previous conclusions and have walked that madness and find it to be irresistible if I'd not otherwise awakened to something more.

I don't find "the end" as obvious as you. I think both religious and non-religious people probably act as they do and have generally similar morals simply because of a mixture of environmental, cultural, and genetic pressure. The former group simply invents a tale to add external [supernatural] authority to their morals because the thought that humans invent morality is scary to them.

Thank you again for this conversation. I've found it stimulating.

Likewise.



E: this thread has inspired me to re-read
this book I had mentioned earlier.

Tell me... how come Neanderthals, who like most prehistoric hunter gatherers were almost certainly perpetually pressed for resources, didn't need Jesus or Aquinas to show compassion for others who were very likely extreme burdens on the group

 

[TexBlazer2106]

Ha, for a relativist you're very protective of alternative interpretations of your words, which is inevitable when disparate viewpoints. I really don't have any desire to throwing phrases back into anyone's faces. I am seeking common ground and common terms with which to discourse.

Your statements made have had a clear, step-wise delineation in your perspective however I've found some of them to be tangential and distracting, unsure what the objection is to picking out a few examples of the reasoning I'm questioning.

If you think I'm questioning that we are largely products of our environment, I am not. That is an obvious assertion to me. My issue is that you seem to view this as a hindrance to humanity moving forward into an agnostic environment and to free ourselves from relying on religious institutions. You can acknowledge both that we are products of and that we have also the ability to reason our way one way or another. Your quoted table is very reflective of that. If we were really so malleable and our traditions so strong, would just over half of those not have "all the same" belief as their parents? Also, really don't like a nebulous category as "some of the same." Regardless, whether or not they think they share the same belief I found it interesting that a substantial number of them attended "worship" irregularly. That's not a very high fidelity to their parents so something else must be influencing them greatly. Honestly with that kind of fray you could imagine drastic change over the course of a handful of generations. Perhaps its just other aspects of their environment or perhaps its something else, I just think its plain that we are not quite predestined as it seems some of your arguments would suggest.
--I'm going to step away from your use of "base case" because they mean something different to us. Even your excerpt mentioned the "prematurity" of our birth and I can't understand why you would want to root humanity's natural proclivities in an immature child.

Your quotation of individual practices to compare to the kind of long-standing religious institutions (again I don't speak for all of them) is quite the comparison, certainly not a steelman comparison. To echo your incredulity, are we not talking essentially about sociocultural evolution here? What we have today is certainly part of that evolution. Discarding that reality in favor of an acknowledgement that some past traditions aren't needed anymore is invalid (I used invalid here because I was a little surprised to see you judge ideas as valid or invalid, doesn't fit so much with a self admitted "hedger")

I assumed my viewpoints were clear in the conversation. I'm representative of a specific religion, Catholicism, here. Any inconsistencies in those views are either a failure on my part, or part of the fallible side of The Church.

Interesting that you went past my question on "kind teachers" because I've often found my kind, or even nice, teachers to be the ones less interested in my improvement than ones who were perceived to be tough or mean. And working together in mutual benefit is not the definition of kindness.

I don't find "the end" as obvious as you. I think both religious and non-religious people probably act as they do and have generally similar morals simply because of a mixture of environmental, cultural, and genetic pressure. The former group simply invents a tale to add external [supernatural] authority to their morals because the thought that humans invent morality is scary to them.

I can't see how the end of the path the rational thought of a purely secular philospher won't end in some sort of nihilism, absurdism and/or hedonism. The bolded above is an incredibly presumptuous/dismissive sentence, one you should avoid.

I don't know what homo neanderthalis did or why. Probably similar patterns of behavior found in herd animals today but I'm not sure.

 

[vector2]

Ha, for a relativist you're very protective of alternative interpretations of your words, which is inevitable when disparate viewpoints. Your statements made have had a clear, step-wise delineation in your perspective however I've found some of them to be tangential and distracting, unsure what the objection is to picking out a few examples of the reasoning I'm questioning.

Assuming that because one is a relativist he doesn't mind having his words misinterpreted is quite the non-sequitur. And if you don't understand my objection, it really just seems like it's willful ignorance or sheer obtuseness at this point. I layed out very concisely why your false equivalences vis a vis "gotchas" were, in fact, false equivalences. Either retort that or don't, but pretending you didn't understand my objection is silly.

If you think I'm questioning that we are largely products of our environment, I am not. That is an obvious assertion to me. My issue is that you seem to view this as a hindrance to humanity moving forward into an agnostic environment and to free ourselves from relying on religious institutions. You can acknowledge both that we are products of and that we have also the ability to reason our way one way or another.

Your quoted table is very reflective of that. If we were really so malleable and our traditions so strong, would just over half of those not have "all the same" belief as their parents? Also, really don't like a nebulous category as "some of the same." Regardless, whether or not they think they share the same belief I found it interesting that a substantial number of them attended "worship" irregularly. That's not a very high fidelity to their parents so something else must be influencing them greatly. Honestly with that kind of fray you could imagine drastic change over the course of a handful of generations. Perhaps its just other aspects of their environment or perhaps its something else, I just think its plain that we are not quite predestined as it seems some of your arguments would suggest.

Yes, we have the ability to reason our way one way or another. But the evidence shows this is rarely the case when it comes to a whole host of a subjective sociological preferences beyond just religion.

Tell me:

Is it very likely or very unlikely that a young adult has the same dietary habits as their parents?
Educational priorities?
Attitude towards finance?
Favorite sports teams?

How about the same political affiliation? Let's see:

Are teens and young adults arriving at 80-90% political concurrence because they're well-read and reasoned in political science by age 17? Of course not. They love Trump, Jesus, and the Pittsburgh Steelers (or AOC, Yahweh, and the New York Yankees) because their parents do.


I don't find your analysis of the poll on religion compelling, mostly because no matter which way you want to nitpick it, at the end of the day a high school kid has a ~90% probability of identifying as generally the same religion as his parents. And ultimately, I think the table is very reflective of my thesis, namely that environmental pressure and sociocultural factors are the overwhelming reason for religious belief (whether it's in Jesus' resurrection or the Cleveland Browns' super bowl chances)- not individuals' reasoned consideration or philosophical aptitude.

--I'm going to step away from your use of "base case" because they mean something different to us. Even your excerpt mentioned the "prematurity" of our birth and I can't understand why you would want to root humanity's natural proclivities in an immature child.

Right, except I've described ad nauseum what I mean by "base case," and instead of engaging in good faith with what I've said you've simply decided to ignore / not engage with the vast majority of the substance of what I've said, or misrepresent it with a rather disingenuous oversimplification about immature children.

I understand that humans having a base case of being born without any knowledge of religion or religious beliefs - and then acquiring those beliefs almost universally through sociocultural factors / environmental pressure rather than reason - is a very inconvenient fact for you. And I understand that its implications are antithetical to your beliefs about the truthiness of religion. But at the end of the day....it's still a fact.

Your quotation of individual practices to compare to the kind of long-standing religious institutions (again I don't speak for all of them) is quite the comparison, certainly not a steelman comparison. To echo your incredulity, are we not talking essentially about sociocultural evolution here? What we have today is certainly part of that evolution. Discarding that reality in favor of an acknowledgement that some past traditions aren't needed anymore is invalid (I used invalid here because I was a little surprised to see you judge ideas as valid or invalid, doesn't fit so much with a self admitted "hedger")

I have no idea what you're saying here. You stated that part of religion's validity (or veracity, or however you want to phrase it) was based on how longstanding it was / how old it was. That line is argumentation is fallacious. That's all I was saying.

I assumed my viewpoints were clear in the conversation. I'm representative of a specific religion, Catholicism, here. Any inconsistencies in those views are either a failure on my part, or part of the fallible side of The Church.

This doesn't really answer any of the questions I asked in my post. Namely:

For instance, do you find the assertion that "complex morals / ethics / social behaviors arose in man...because [Judeo-Christian God]" to be axiomatically true? Are you axiomatically closed to empiric and/or scientific theories from evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology which try to elucidate how complex behavior can arise through natural selection? Do you believe that Homo sapiens evolved from apes in the first place?​

I can't see how the end of the path the rational thought of a purely secular philospher won't end in some sort of nihilism, absurdism and/or hedonism. The bolded above is an incredibly presumptuous/dismissive sentence, one you should avoid.

Maybe you could try harder? Millions of people who you would likely believe have a decent moral compass function just fine with a secular ethical system, and oddly enough they don't live with the perpetual fear of degeneration into nihilism, absurdism, or hedonism.

As to what you bolded, I don't think it's presumptuous nor dismissive. It's certainly curtly stated, but there's nothing in there which hasn't been laid out in a reasoned argument in the last 20,000 words. Instead of taking offense, maybe instead lay out a case why "I think both religious and non-religious people probably act as they do and have generally similar morals simply because of a mixture of environmental, cultural, and genetic pressure. The former group simply invents a tale to add external [supernatural] authority to their morals because the thought that humans invent morality is scary to them."...... is false.

I don't know what homo neanderthalis did or why. Probably similar patterns of behavior found in herd animals today but I'm not sure.

Heh, quite the tonal shift here from "If Tarzan existed do you think he would selflessly share with another human he just met?" From the implication it seems you were pretty sure at one point that prehistoric men were just immoral unthinking brutes. Not so much now?

And yes, while some pack animals care for their sick in a way, this is not analogous to Neanderthals. In addition to caring for their old and sick, Neanderthals used complex tools, were capable of symbolic and artistic expression, mastered fire, and buried their dead. The evidence is pretty clear that early man was capable of bonafide empathy and compassion in a fashion similar to modern humans, not just animals. So again, I'll ask: how were these beings (not just Neanderthals but prehistoric Homo sapiens) capable of such complex moral behavior without Jesus or Aquinas, etc? And furthermore, given the existence of such behavior so early in the evolutionary tree, please explain why you don't think the most parsimonious explanation for modern humans' moral behavior is a naturalistic one.

 

[TexBlazer2106]

We're diverging from common ground again and from the rapidity of your replies I don't think you're taking my statements with consideration.

- The data you are presenting indeed supports the fact that our close environment (parents) heavily influence our thinking especially when we are relatively young (teenagers). However, you make an assumption to mean that people carry these beliefs with a high enough fidelity to propagate them to the next generation and therefore society ends up with these vestigial structures which to you are obvious remnants to be discarded. This is clearly not supported by the evidence you've presented thus far. There's no guarantee that these teenagers will take these views into their mid to late 20s, mid 30s, etc and then pass them onto their children based on what you've presented and certainly not evidence to support that these views are passed with enough fidelity to ensure a lasting tradition. You really think (assuming not a single teenager changes their views) that kids showing around 50-70% fidelity at best would be enough to ensure that the tradition is strong throughout multiple generations? *insert typical vector2 derision*

- Here is a perfect example of an easy mistake in interpretations, but not one I'm going to badger you about. The Tarzan reference has nothing to do with "prehistoric humans" but rather an exploration into your previously stated "base case" theory for humanity. In this theory you extrapolate from the (very believable and easy to understand) observation that human children are born much more vulnerable and physically immature than most animals. Children are then assigned a reasoning capacity at that time called weak atheism, perfectly reasonable, and then assumed that if no outside influence "molded them" in one form or fashion that they would keep that reasoning capacity/propensity/instinct or whatever definition you want into adulthood and that is just one big assumption. Tarzan is representative of such an adult "freed from molding" that I used to question this assumption.

- Real sociocultural evolution has given us, today, a large portion of the population that practices religion in one form or fashion. Understand that is a fact. Trying to compare the multi-faceted aspects of a religious belief system to a few different traditions is an unequivocal strawman argument.

For instance, do you find the assertion that "complex morals / ethics / social behaviors arose in man...because [Judeo-Christian God]" to be axiomatically true? Are you axiomatically closed to empiric and/or scientific theories from evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology which try to elucidate how complex behavior can arise through natural selection? Do you believe that Homo sapiens evolved from apes in the first place?

Try asking the question without using the word "axiomatically." You can use axiom, but they way you're phrasing it is a leading question.

- I don't know what Neaderthals thought or did but let me make an assumption no less valid than yours:

:We Neanderthals were indeed masters of the naturalistic arts, capable of exploring an autonomous mind and robust physical statures to rule the environment around them. Smaller and weaker Homos were wandering around but they were clearly stupid as they would fall to their knees and look to the skies for assistance as if bread would fall from them for their nourishment! Fools! They are clearly weaker in both mind as much as body. We Homo Neanderthalis are the pinnacle of the material, we explore multiple different realms of thought and the full array of attributes from aggression to passive, we've dabbled in compassion and tolerated the first attempts of artistic expression. After many generations of free thinking unencumbered by supernatural fears we've all come to the same conclusion, that this life is not worth living. We Neaderthals have all gathered together to enact the only action that makes logical sense and too go peacefully into the Long Sleep. Good luck stupid Homo Sapiens, you're sure to follow once you've gotten to our level of thinking."

 

[vector2]

We're diverging from common ground again and from the rapidity of your replies I don't think you're taking my statements with consideration.

I give each of your posts pretty close consideration and usually a lengthy reply, so I don't think it's particularly wise to confuse rapidity of response with whether your points were understood. If anything, I'd venture your replies addressing the real meat and bones specifics of what I've been saying have been arriving at a much lower rate.

- The data you are presenting indeed supports the fact that our close environment (parents) heavily influence our thinking especially when we are relatively young (teenagers). However, you make an assumption to mean that people carry these beliefs with a high enough fidelity to propagate them to the next generation and therefore society ends up with these vestigial structures which to you are obvious remnants to be discarded. This is clearly not supported by the evidence you've presented thus far. There's no guarantee that these teenagers will take these views into their mid to late 20s, mid 30s, etc and then pass them onto their children based on what you've presented and certainly not evidence to support that these views are passed with enough fidelity to ensure a lasting tradition. You really think (assuming not a single teenager changes their views) that kids showing around 50-70% fidelity at best would be enough to ensure that the tradition is strong throughout multiple generations? *insert typical vector2 derision*

I think you're latching on to the fact I didn't present explicit evidence that someone who is a theist at age 18 will be a theist at age 30 or 50 like that's somehow proof (or an implication) that that statement isn't true. Which is frankly absurd.

But let me do some homework again to satisfy your incredulity as to what is intuitively an obviously true statement:

Only 16% of Americans say they are thinking about leaving their current religious tradition or denomination. About two in ten Latter-day Saints (24%), other Protestants of color (20%), white Catholics (20%), white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (18%), and other Christians (17%) say they are thinking about leaving their religious tradition, compared with 15% of white evangelical Protestants, 14% of Hispanic Protestants, 13% of Hispanic Catholics, 11% of Black Protestants, and 10% of both Jewish Americans and members of other non-Christian religions.

The vast majority of people who report changing religious tradition or denomination were young when they made the switch: 27% say they were younger than 18, 44% were between 18 and 29, 21% were between 30 and 49, and just 7% were age 50 or older.

Religion and Congregations in a Time of Social and Political Upheaval - PRRI

This new survey from PRRI examines the religious behaviors of Americans amid an uncertain cultural and political landscape.

www.prri.org

So, the vast majority of Americans are very sticky in their religious beliefs, and when they're not they change them young. The result of which would mean that by the time they're raising teenagers of their own, the religious beliefs they're passing on to them are not particularly flexible.

And if we take a bit of a broader view and look outside of America (which is growingly secular), what do you think we'd find in Saudi Arabia? Or how bout Thailand?

95%+ of the population in those countries have been Muslim or Buddhist, respectively, for oh I dunno over a 1000 years. (On a personal note, my grandma probably has a family tree stashed somewhere that can demonstrate at least 200+ yrs of Brahmin Hindus in my family). You've done a lot of inane nitpicking about some of the data I've presented, but what you haven't done is show us a countervailing theory which refutes my thesis that Christians in America, or Muslims in Saudi Arabia, or Buddhists in Thailand are mostly that way because of intense environmental and cultural pressure from parents (+society)-- a pressure which is memetic and multigenerational in nature.

To reiterate, I think it's fair to say

-Humans are born devoid of religious knowledge (weak atheists)
-By the time they're young adults, 80-90% of people share most or some of their religious beliefs with their parents. [At the very least it's fair to say that they probably subscribe to the same theism as their parents, but maybe a different denomination]
-The vast majority of teenagers have not done serious academic or philosophical study about many of the subjective beliefs they share with their parents, be it politics or religion
-By the time they become adults, 80+% of Judeo-Christian Americans do not think about switching their religion
-However, when they do switch their religion they mostly do so before they've reached the age where they would be imprinting the religion upon their teens

- Here is a perfect example of an easy mistake in interpretations, but not one I'm going to badger you about. The Tarzan reference has nothing to do with "prehistoric humans" but rather an exploration into your previously stated "base case" theory for humanity. In this theory you extrapolate from the (very believable and easy to understand) observation that human children are born much more vulnerable and physically immature than most animals. Children are then assigned a reasoning capacity at that time called weak atheism, perfectly reasonable, and then assumed that if no outside influence "molded them" in one form or fashion that they would keep that reasoning capacity/propensity/instinct or whatever definition you want into adulthood and that is just one big assumption. Tarzan is representative of such an adult "freed from molding" that I used to question this assumption.

It's a bit much to state that it has *nothing* to do with prehistoric humans when, indeed, prehistoric humans are an actual population case study by which to test a bit of the "freed from molding" hypothesis.

To me, it was pretty clear that your original Tarzan question had a facetious implication to it that the "unmolded" primitive human would have the same (almost non-existent) moral reasoning ability as a child. The point I've been making to you all along is that complex moral behavior is seen time and time again in beings that have had no molding by modern philosophical or religious thought.

- Real sociocultural evolution has given us, today, a large portion of the population that practices religion in one form or fashion. Understand that is a fact.

I never disputed this.

Trying to compare the multi-faceted aspects of a religious belief system to a few different traditions is an unequivocal strawman argument.

I think I'll frame this one as the prime example of how you reply to me without actually responding to me.

Again. Very simply. You made an argument for religion's truthiness/veracity/validity/whatever based on how long-standing it's been or how old it is. Which as I keep telling you is a (well-known) fallacious line of reasoning called appeal to tradition or argumentum ad antiquitam. I know it hurts, but I swear you'll eventually feel better when you stop using this line of argumentation to try to convince anyone of anything.

Try asking the question without using the word "axiomatically." You can use axiom, but they way you're phrasing it is a leading question.

I keep trying to tell you, I choose my words specifically. I used the term axiomatically not as a leading question, but because there's a substantive difference between whether one find something true...or whether one finds something axiomatically true, especially in a discussion that pertains to philosophy/epistemology.

So one more time:

For instance, do you find the assertion that "complex morals / ethics / social behaviors arose in man...because [Judeo-Christian God]" to be axiomatically true? Are you axiomatically closed to empiric and/or scientific theories from evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology which try to elucidate how complex behavior can arise through natural selection? Do you believe that Homo sapiens evolved from apes in the first place?​

If no response again, I guess that'll be a cue to stop beating you over the head with evidence or arguments for parsimoniousmess of complex human moral behavior arising naturalistically.

- I don't know what Neaderthals thought or did but let me make an assumption no less valid than yours:

:We Neanderthals were indeed masters of the naturalistic arts, capable of exploring an autonomous mind and robust physical statures to rule the environment around them. Smaller and weaker Homos were wandering around but they were clearly stupid as they would fall to their knees and look to the skies for assistance as if bread would fall from them for their nourishment! Fools! They are clearly weaker in both mind as much as body. We Homo Neanderthalis are the pinnacle of the material, we explore multiple different realms of thought and the full array of attributes from aggression to passive, we've dabbled in compassion and tolerated the first attempts of artistic expression. After many generations of free thinking unencumbered by supernatural fears we've all come to the same conclusion, that this life is not worth living. We Neaderthals have all gathered together to enact the only action that makes logical sense and too go peacefully into the Long Sleep. Good luck stupid Homo Sapiens, you're sure to follow once you've gotten to our level of thinking."

TBH, I find your allegory implying that beings who have a very, very strong self-preservation instinct are suddenly going to devolve into mass suicidal existentialist nihilism the second they stray from some theism du jour...to be pretty hilarious.

But anyway, to go back (again) to the part of my post you didn't actually respond to, let me be clear: I didn't ask you whether you thought Neanderthals engaged in complex moral behavior. *I stated to you* that they did, in fact, engage in complex moral behavior. And given that they engaged in such behavior, I then asked you how they were capable of such complex moral behavior without Jesus or Aquinas, etc (after all, one of your main assertions earlier in the thread is that all secular moral systems are essentially derivatives of religious ones). And furthermore, given the existence of such behavior so early in the evolutionary tree, how you came to conclusion that the most parsimonious explanation for modern humans' moral behavior isn't a naturalistic one.

Neither of those questions requires you to know precisely how Neanderthals thought or did. They're mostly just pointed questions meant to cause you to reflect on the problems inherent in believing that your "correct" avenue to moral reasoning could've only arrived so narrowly and recently in human history.

 

[TexBlazer2106]

I think you're latching on to the fact I didn't present explicit evidence that someone who is a theist at age 18 will be a theist at age 30 or 50 like that's somehow proof (or an implication) that that statement isn't true. Which is frankly absurd.

It's clear that I'm not. I think your evidence is fine, you've provided more to demonstrate that only a quarter of the people who change their religious beliefs do so as teenagers, the rest after. None of these are particularly great measures of evidence (surveys with options that people undoubtedly interpret differently) but sure its safe to say the majority of people stay with the belief they were raised in. I've stated a couple of times now that that my issue is with the conclusion you draw from this data to say that a population could maintain a majority just from "indoctrination" if you have something like 30% of a generation that does not follow in their parents footsteps. That is a decay that a majority cannot tolerate and still remain a majority. Thus it's clear from the evidence produced that there is a significant amount of "other sources" of members that must be added to maintain a robust population. This would argue against your earlier suppositions that people are unable to "progress" from religion because its what they're raised in. Obviously, I think people learning from their parents keeps them in the same religion but its not enough in of itself to propagate that religion.
--Also brings up the question of people born with agnostic/atheist parents who "convert" to a religious belief. Why do you think they do so (assuming this would have to be one of the sources that cancels out the decay of the religious population)?

You're inferring something from my representation of the Tarzan analogy to fit your arguments (something you've gotten mad at me about). Tarzan represents a modern person freed from molding. This is exploring your supposition that mature humans are "weak atheists."

"

Real sociocultural evolution has given us, today, a large portion of the population that practices religion in one form or fashion. Understand that is a fact.

I never disputed this.
"Trying to compare the multi-faceted aspects of a religious belief system to a few different traditions is an unequivocal strawman argument."

I think I'll frame this one as the prime example of how you reply to me without actually responding to me.

Again. Very simply. You made an argument for religion's truthiness/veracity/validity/whatever based on how long-standing it's been or how old it is. Which as I keep telling you is a (well-known) fallacious line of reasoning called appeal to tradition or argumentum ad antiquitam. I know it hurts, but I swear you'll eventually feel better when you stop using this line of argumentation to try to convince anyone of anything.

You're really not going to accept that the sociocultural evolution over time of a complex multifaceted living philosophy/ethical code is by definition at least a sufficient argument for validity? You're trying to dismiss it by framing it as an "appeal to tradition" and a strawman comparison between things which are traditions of limited scope and relevance. I understand why though because you've spent a lot of text anchoring it as a large logical flaw of mine.

I keep trying to tell you, I choose my words specifically. I used the term axiomatically not as a leading question, but because there's a substantive difference between whether one find something true...or whether one finds something axiomatically true, especially in a discussion that pertains to philosophy/epistemology.

So one more time:


For instance, do you find the assertion that "complex morals / ethics / social behaviors arose in man...because [Judeo-Christian God]" to be axiomatically true? Are you axiomatically closed to empiric and/or scientific theories from evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology which try to elucidate how complex behavior can arise through natural selection? Do you believe that Homo sapiens evolved from apes in the first place?
If no response again, I guess that'll be a cue to stop beating you over the head with evidence or arguments for parsimoniousmess of complex human moral behavior arising naturalistically.

Of course you are using words specifically and its certainly to lead me to some "gotcha" (this is your word). I can give you an axiom or two if that's what you'd like but answering yes/no questions in this sense provides you a neat box to fit me into (again something you've accused me of doing) with which you have a ready response.
--The only things you're beating me over the head with is the size of your leaps in assumption and your vocabulary.

I actually really like my Neaderthal representation too. Putting aside the audacious assumptions of "factual" knowledge of Neaderthal's naturalistic moral system, I think its interesting to ask why they died out if they had such things as a moral system, the ability to reason, supposedly abstract thought. Such things would find obstacles like mammoths dying out or pesky smaller and weaker humans attacking them as merely an obstacle to overcome. What happened?

 

[vector2]

It's clear that I'm not. I think your evidence is fine, you've provided more to demonstrate that only a quarter of the people who change their religious beliefs do so as teenagers, the rest after. None of these are particularly great measures of evidence (surveys with options that people undoubtedly interpret differently) but sure its safe to say the majority of people stay with the belief they were raised in. I've stated a couple of times now that that my issue is with the conclusion you draw from this data to say that a population could maintain a majority just from "indoctrination" if you have something like 30% of a generation that does not follow in their parents footsteps. That is a decay that a majority cannot tolerate and still remain a majority. Thus it's clear from the evidence produced that there is a significant amount of "other sources" of members that must be added to maintain a robust population. This would argue against your earlier suppositions that people are unable to "progress" from religion because its what they're raised in. Obviously, I think people learning from their parents keeps them in the same religion but its not enough in of itself to propagate that religion.
--Also brings up the question of people born with agnostic/atheist parents who "convert" to a religious belief. Why do you think they do so (assuming this would have to be one of the sources that cancels out the decay of the religious population)?

In none of the data I've presented so far does it say or imply that "30% of a generation...does not follow in their parents footsteps." And I really hope that was a genuine misunderstanding of yours and not you trying to be purposefully deceptive. Read what I posted again. I quoted that "Only 16% of Americans say they are thinking about leaving their current religious tradition or denomination" followed by "The vast majority of people who report changing religious tradition or denomination were young when they made the switch: 27% say they were younger than 18"

Which means that of the 16% who left their religious tradition or denomination, 27% of those 16% did so when they were teenagers. And obviously 27% of 16% is a pretty small number- a number that lends credence to my thesis that environmental and sociocultural pressure is responsible for the creation (and stickiness) of religious belief.

But even if your wildly inaccurate claim were true, notice that the survey data included folks who left "denominations" and not just their entire religion. You've attempted to spin the data to imply that there are enough young people who diverge so significantly from the parents that there must be some special sauce to religion which keeps them coming back beyond their initial indoctrination. However, given the fact the vast majority of change isn't a change from theism to atheism, but rather just a change from theism to another kind of arguably very, very similar theism (e.g. my father in law who converted to Methodist from Baptist after he got married), this supports the idea that there is no substantial decay to which you're referring.

Furthermore, I noticed (as you're wont to do) that you did not engage on the examples I brought up regarding Saudi Arabia or Thailand, where 95% of the population is the same religion and has been so for over a millennium. I would love to hear your spin on why environmental / sociocultural indoctrination from a young age and throughout adulthood is not responsible for those cases.

To recap, I don't think even someone biased to your agenda who simply looked at the survey data and saw

-40% of 11-12th graders having "all of the same" religious beliefs as their parents
-48% of 11-12th graders having "some of the same" religious beliefs as their parents
-84% of Judeo-Christian Americans do not think about switching their religion

could reasonably come to the conclusion that young people diverge in their religious beliefs significantly enough from their parents to cause a multigeneration "decay" in the number of theists of the same brand in a society.

You're inferring something from my representation of the Tarzan analogy to fit your arguments (something you've gotten mad at me about). Tarzan represents a modern person freed from molding. This is exploring your supposition that mature humans are "weak atheists."



You're really not going to accept that the sociocultural evolution over time of a complex multifaceted living philosophy/ethical code is by definition at least a sufficient argument for validity? You're trying to dismiss it by framing it as an "appeal to tradition" and a strawman comparison between things which are traditions of limited scope and relevance. I understand why though because you've spent a lot of text anchoring it as a large logical flaw of mine.

Correct, I'm not going to accept that the longevity of some ethical code is *sufficient* for validity. Because it's not. It's likely *necessary* for validity. But it's not sufficient.

And if I might, just using the word strawman over and over without demonstrating how something is strawman doesn't get you anywhere. Slavery has existed in documented history for over 3,500 years and has probably existed in human civilization since the prehistoric agricultural revolution. The institution of slavery was heavily integrated into complex, multifaceted ethical codes ranging from Hammurabi's Code to the laws of the Roman Republic and the Antebellum American South. Furthermore, American slavery persisted not just through integration with the economic interests of slaveowners and state governments, but also by integration with the Christianity of that era. Scriptural interpretations, church endorsements, and slaveholders' personal religious beliefs all worked to reinforce the "justness" of the institution.

So forgive me if I laugh my ass off when you try to justify your fallacious line of reasoning by trying to characterize long-standing, highly complex - but ultimately wrong-headed - traditions such as slavery as "of limited scope and relevance" with regard to a discussion about religion. Seriously, just lol.

Of course you are using words specifically and its certainly to lead me to some "gotcha" (this is your word). I can give you an axiom or two if that's what you'd like but answering yes/no questions in this sense provides you a neat box to fit me into (again something you've accused me of doing) with which you have a ready response.

No, it's not to lead you to a gotcha. Although to be fair, I understand your recalcitrance because I've seen similar lines of questioning in past internet discussions used to place highly intelligent theists such as yourself in uncomfortable positions. However, I'm asking because I have shared plenty about what I think specifically about theories regarding the origins / evolution of complex moral behavior in humans, including some of the sources which inform my view. And I think it can be clearly inferred that I have some axiomatic belief in the validity of empiricism, since there is no objective or "external" mechanism by which the validity of empiricism can be proved or inferred. OTOH, you've shared pretty much nothing in kind other than the fact that you're Catholic and somewhat Aquinian. Which is not quite enough information because theists can vary wildly in belief when it comes to how much emphasis goes where with regard to explaining phenomena such as morality.

And in none of the questions I asked did I say you only had to respond with a yes/no answer. Obviously in a thread/discussion of tens of thousands of words you're free to expound as much as you want. But your answers do matter within the broader context of how much naturalism (if any) vs how much metaphysics informs your view.

I actually really like my Neaderthal representation too. Putting aside the audacious assumptions of "factual" knowledge of Neaderthal's naturalistic moral system, I think its interesting to ask why they died out if they had such things as a moral system, the ability to reason, supposedly abstract thought. Such things would find obstacles like mammoths dying out or pesky smaller and weaker humans attacking them as merely an obstacle to overcome. What happened?

Audacious assumption? Your spin knows no bounds, eh?

I said it's fact that Neanderthals engaged in complex moral behaviors. The archaeological / anthropological evidence shows Neanderthals engaged in ritualistic burying of their dead and that they cared for the sick and elderly. The fact that made cave paintings and ornaments/sculptures also suggests their capability for abstract thought and the expression of cultural and personal identity. So what exactly are you disputing here? Again I'll ask: how were they capable of such complex moral behavior without Jesus or Aquinas, etc (after all, one of your main assertions earlier in the thread is that all secular moral systems are essentially derivatives of religious ones). And furthermore, given the existence of such behavior so early in the evolutionary tree, how did you come to the conclusion that the most parsimonious explanation for modern humans' moral behavior isn't a naturalistic one?


And with regard to dying out, it's a non-sequitur to imply that the general ability to engage in complex moral behavior and abstract thought is somehow mutually exclusive with going extinct.

 

[TexBlazer2106]

Simple survey data doesn't tell the whole story. Answering a 3 question survey to state your beliefs is one thing, but practicing is quite different. For example, (and I acknowledge that I have some bias here in my perspective but the point remains) in your first article roughly a third of the respondents who answered "all of the same" and over half of the "some of the same" attend religious service a couple of times in a year. That's a questionable commitment to whatever religion they endorse and that would likely show up on closer inspection, not that it's possible to identify that in the above. A real world example of this would be Joe Biden who would probably answer Catholic on a sheet but who's actions are far enough away from a standard Catholic to seriously question that category for him. The second article has what you've referenced but then also discusses a subgroup, "white Christians," who had a 10% decline in roughly a generation. I don't know exactly how to explain this but think likely there wasn't an organized "free thinking" movement in the 2010s amongst this subgroup. This is not to say it disproves the importance of family influence, just that its likely religious affiliations are more nuanced than just following parent's footsteps (and no I don't think the average person puts very serious theological thought to come to whatever conclusion they do). For those people who switch denominations for convenience purposes, I would be concerned that their faith isn't on a solid foundation (not to disparage anyone who does that). For Saudi's and Thai's, I don't know. I could speculate, but it would be just that.

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I have not argued that it was sufficient in of itself for validity, the comment I made was in reference to asking for some sort of guiding principals in which a totally secular society offers both the collective and the individual. It was a rhetorical statement and I was not asking for a Secularist's guide to Morality 2.0 and I was surprised to see push-back given, insomuch as the question that any guiding principals were particularly needed (I'm not saying you don't or couldn't present any, I'm speaking broadly). I'm of course going to point out that the fact that (moralistically) we've evolved to this point in society today. You've attempted to focus on the longevity side of the argument and deflect it by bringing up examples of traditions that existed for long periods of time. Yes, slavery has been ubiquitous in human history. It's a horrible institution that humanity has used in order to fill labor needs. If humans had a nano fabricator for a couple of millennium now (assuming some sort of ready fuel source) I doubt that slavery would have been as pervasive as it was. But in that sense, yes its scope was limited. As far as complexity, slavery really could be boiled down to bodies provided for labor or pleasure with the complex portion being the integration in society to limit revolts, maximize the value of said slaves or qualify its barter system.
--as an aside, the Enlightenment oversaw probably the largest slavery movement in history (maybe more in Roman times) in the Atlantic slave trade. You've mentioned Hume before and here is a quote of his,
"I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complection [sic] than white, nor even any individual eminent in action or speculation."

You are correct, I have not shared my particular views which is not fair as you have. My axioms are tied to some of the offerings of proofs of a supernatural origin. Aquinas' argument of the unmoved mover, the teleological argument and to a lesser extent C.S Lewis' Morality argument are the most prominent in my thinking. None of which advocate for a specific religion, but do answer the question, "are we an accident or not?" Lewis' Morality argument is probably somewhat related to our conversation as is Aquinas' other work. This is the core of what I consider self-evident.

For Neanderthals specifically, I don't consider the anthropological evidence to be compelling one way or another. We can only speculate on what they did or didn't think from the few snapshots of what we have today. I would have thought that abstract thought and reason would have been as evolutionary important as the formation of the eye and would have sprung several different species with those capabilities to then co-evolve together, but that wasn't the case.

 

[vector2]

Simple survey data doesn't tell the whole story. Answering a 3 question survey to state your beliefs is one thing, but practicing is quite different. For example, (and I acknowledge that I have some bias here in my perspective but the point remains) in your first article roughly a third of the respondents who answered "all of the same" and over half of the "some of the same" attend religious service a couple of times in a year. That's a questionable commitment to whatever religion they endorse and that would likely show up on closer inspection, not that it's possible to identify that in the above. A real world example of this would be Joe Biden who would probably answer Catholic on a sheet but who's actions are far enough away from a standard Catholic to seriously question that category for him. The second article has what you've referenced but then also discusses a subgroup, "white Christians," who had a 10% decline in roughly a generation. I don't know exactly how to explain this but think likely there wasn't an organized "free thinking" movement in the 2010s amongst this subgroup. This is not to say it disproves the importance of family influence, just that its likely religious affiliations are more nuanced than just following parent's footsteps (and no I don't think the average person puts very serious theological thought to come to whatever conclusion they do). For those people who switch denominations for convenience purposes, I would be concerned that their faith isn't on a solid foundation (not to disparage anyone who does that). For Saudi's and Thai's, I don't know. I could speculate, but it would be just that.

Sure, survey data isn't perfect. And yet your counterarguments have been based on what? Inane nitpicking of the data that does exist mixed with a healthy dose of your biased opinion/feelz about the issue. Who are you to say that a Protestant who has accepted Jesus Christ into their heart as their Lord and Savior isn't actually a Christian based on your totally arbitrary expectation of how often they attend services? Who are you to say that my father in law who converted to Methodism, who is one of the charter members of his church and who assists in bible school school teaching there, doesn't have faith that's on a "solid foundation"? Your statements about who's the "real" theist reek of another fallacy, i.e. the No true Scotsman. Just imagine all the Muslims who say you have a "questionable commitment" because you don't formally pray 5 times per day.

As I said in my prior post, your reading into the importance of the language "some of the same" is not congruent with the fact that 86% of Judeo-Christians do not seriously considering changing their religion throughout their lives. And it's not congruent with the main relevance of the population data to this discussion, namely that it shows people are generally still Judeo-Christian theists even if they slightly vary their beliefs later in life. Again, your main point was that there is some special sauce that brings people back to Christianity because so many people leave the faith entirely intergenerationally. The data we have does not support this notion at all. Instead, it supports the thesis that environmental and cultural influence from family and society primarily propagates religious beliefs.

And indeed, it's quite convenient that you're unable to speculate on what's going on in Saudi Arabia or Thailand. Most likely because what's going on in those cultures heavily, heavily supports my thesis. Have you noticed you argue from a very broad theistic view when it supports your ideas (i.e. some kind of vague religion/religious views have existed for a long time in humanity ergo validity), but then immediately retreat to the refuge of a narrow Judeo-Christian worldview (and plead ignorance) when put in a difficult spot?

View attachment 373824

I have not argued that it was sufficient in of itself for validity, the comment I made was in reference to asking for some sort of guiding principals in which a totally secular society offers both the collective and the individual. It was a rhetorical statement and I was not asking for a Secularist's guide to Morality 2.0 and I was surprised to see push-back given, insomuch as the question that any guiding principals were particularly needed (I'm not saying you don't or couldn't present any, I'm speaking broadly). I'm of course going to point out that the fact that (moralistically) we've evolved to this point in society today. You've attempted to focus on the longevity side of the argument and deflect it by bringing up examples of traditions that existed for long periods of time. Yes, slavery has been ubiquitous in human history. It's a horrible institution that humanity has used in order to fill labor needs. If humans had a nano fabricator for a couple of millennium now (assuming some sort of ready fuel source) I doubt that slavery would have been as pervasive as it was. But in that sense, yes its scope was limited. As far as complexity, slavery really could be boiled down to bodies provided for labor or pleasure with the complex portion being the integration in society to limit revolts, maximize the value of said slaves or qualify its barter system.
--as an aside, the Enlightenment oversaw probably the largest slavery movement in history (maybe more in Roman times) in the Atlantic slave trade. You've mentioned Hume before and here is a quote of his,
"I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complection [sic] than white, nor even any individual eminent in action or speculation."

Nope. Just nope. Your handwave here is simply not going to work, because the bulk of the historical and anthropological evidence shows a deep engraining of slavery into the respective cultural traditions in each society where it existed. This line of argumentation where you assume it was mostly just about labor and if nanobots existed you're sure slavery would've died out is pure, unsupported speculation. There is no separating its complex societal integration from just the labor aspect.

Again, your argument is fallacious, and it remains specious because I could easily just say for 99.999% of human civilization it appeared we had 'evolved to this point in society" where slavery was obviously a correct and just institution. We had "evolved" there right up until the second we didn't. There is increasing evidence that more and more Americans are less religious as more time goes by. Per your argument, would growing unpopularity invalidate the "trueness" of your beliefs?

You are correct, I have not shared my particular views which is not fair as you have. My axioms are tied to some of the offerings of proofs of a supernatural origin. Aquinas' argument of the unmoved mover, the teleological argument and to a lesser extent C.S Lewis' Morality argument are the most prominent in my thinking. None of which advocate for a specific religion, but do answer the question, "are we an accident or not?" Lewis' Morality argument is probably somewhat related to our conversation as is Aquinas' other work. This is the core of what I consider self-evident.
[/Quote ]

There are plenty of refutations of the unmoved mover, the teleological argument, and CS Lewis' take on morality (I believe all might actually be found in this book but don't quote me on that because I haven't read it in a long time) so there's no reason to bloat the thread any more by going down this rabbit hole.

But what you've said still doesn't specifically answer the following questions I asked here, because I think many Aquinian CS Lewis fans could still go either way regarding many naturalistic questions...

For instance, do you find the assertion that "complex morals / ethics / social behaviors arose in man...because [Judeo-Christian God]" to be axiomatically true? Are you axiomatically closed to empiric and/or scientific theories from evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology which try to elucidate how complex behavior can arise through natural selection? Do you believe that Homo sapiens evolved from apes in the first place?​

For Neanderthals specifically, I don't consider the anthropological evidence to be compelling one way or another. We can only speculate on what they did or didn't think from the few snapshots of what we have today. I would have thought that abstract thought and reason would have been as evolutionary important as the formation of the eye and would have sprung several different species with those capabilities to then co-evolve together, but that wasn't the case.

I guess it is what it is if you don't find it compelling, but just know you're mostly being obtuse considering evidence of complex ritualistic moral behaviors in prehistoric, pre monotheism humans actually exists.

Indeed, abstract thought is evolutionarily important. Hence why Homo sapiens, who are superior at abstract thought, probably persisted past the age of Neanderthals. Better mousetrap and all.

 

[TexBlazer2106]

You're actually touching on an old Catholic vs Protestant, Faith vs Works theological argument which is interesting. Don't twist it though, I put a disclaimer in my argument addressing people like your father-in-law, which you ignored, and instead used a much more real and objective example of President Biden purporting to be Catholic and then advocating for legislation that is antipathy of Catholic teachings. It is fair to question whether or not someone truly believes what they say when they only go to church a few times in a year without subjectively leaning upon my own prejudice. So please, stop quoting 84% as a number that represents Judeo-Christian fidelity, it doesn't have any more meaning than my arbitrary 70%. I understand why you are so wary of having your own beliefs categorized because you are trying very hard, and stretching very much, to shove my arguments to fit into a box to be summarily dismissed as a logical fallacy.

You want to know why I think Saudi Arabia or Thailand is a bad comparison to us in America? Look at history, SA and Thailand have geographical features that keep them mostly isolated and insular from the outer world for hundreds of years and haven't experienced large influxes of alternative cultures. America is completely different in which the current culture has evolved over a period of 250 years with multiple different cultural influences and large reorganizations in a relatively short amount of time. How can you say Americans on average experience the same intense cultural and environmental pressure as in SA/T? They almost certainly haven't had the same historical and geographical backgrounds. Indeed, that uniqueness would suggest that if there are similar patterns, such as a strong presence of theism over multiple generations, then "similar cultural pressures" are probably not the reason as they are dissimilar.

I agree with you that America is becoming more secular and that trend has accelerated over the last two decades. For example, Figure 1 in the article you quoted from PRRI showed that among whites secularism has increased from 16% to 26% in 15 years. Have their been any large changes among trends of white families during that timespan? Overall 2 parent families have declined 20% in the last 50 years but from my knowledge that's been largely driven by large losses in minority groups (specifically African Americans). In your opinion what's driving this trend and how does that impact your theories?

Nope. Just nope. Your handwave here is simply not going to work, because the bulk of the historical and anthropological evidence shows a deep engraining of slavery into the respective cultural traditions in each society where it existed. This line of argumentation where you assume it was mostly just about labor and if nanobots existed you're sure slavery would've died out is pure, unsupported speculation. There is no separating its complex societal integration from just the labor aspect.

Wait slavery's historical complex social integration can't be explained away as an adaptation humanity has used to justify subjugating their fellow man? And the reason that it can't is because of the different varieties across different cultures? Have you not been arguing that the better moral values that humanity should live by are evident by natural selection and any overlap between that study and religious tenets are merely humanity's fearful attempts to explain unknown phenomenon by supernatural means? I'll let you correct the details but the reversal in stances is noted.

There are plenty of refutations of the unmoved mover, the teleological argument, and CS Lewis' take on morality (I believe all might actually be found in this book but don't quote me on that because I haven't read it in a long time) so there's no reason to bloat the thread any more by going down this rabbit hole.

Did you just dismiss Aquinas and Co. with a book written by a guy named George H. Smith whose biggest accolade is being a part of a libertarian and liberal think-tanks? Are you being serious? I looked the book up and scanned a brief review of it and it doesn't seem like the guy even shares your definitions of an atheist and agnostic. I don't think this teetering discussion could bear such a heavy turn, but I will say that the teleological argument can't be disproved today, your rebuttal of "god of the gaps" is much more compelling and just as easily un-provable (except for the mathematics of the question that would describe such possibilities of such things happening spontaneously as so infinitesimally small as to be impossible). It really doesn't matter for the purposes of the conversation, I'm just not going to let your comment pass through unaddressed.

You've asked multiple times for the answers to the following,

For instance, do you find the assertion that "complex morals / ethics / social behaviors arose in man...because [Judeo-Christian God]" to be axiomatically true? Are you axiomatically closed to empiric and/or scientific theories from evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology which try to elucidate how complex behavior can arise through natural selection? Do you believe that Homo sapiens evolved from apes in the first place?

They don't make sense to me to ask these questions after my recent answers.

"find the assertion that complex morals / ethics / social behaviors arose in man...because [Judeo-Christian God]" to be axiomatically true?"
- No I don't find them to be self-evident because they depend, to a degree, on divine revelation.

"Are you axiomatically closed to empiric and/or scientific theories from evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology which try to elucidate how complex behavior can arise through natural selection?"
- I don't understand your use of the word "axiomatically" here? Do I find it self evident to be closed to studies of biology or psychology to understand how complex behaviors can arise by natural selection, isn't a real question. I'll answer what I'm assuming you are saying which is that no I'm not closed to such study. Such study is described by Aquinas as one of the influences of the theory of naturalism today. If you're trying to make it at odds for theology, which it is not.

"Do you believe that Homo sapiens evolved from apes in the first place?"
- please

To continue that last vein though, the eye co-evolved over many different species in an evolutionary sprint. Nature quickly found out in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. This phenomenon is known as the cambrian explosion. There should have been a similar phenomenon with abstract thought with the neanderthals or others specifically playing the foil as evolution advanced cohesively. Even apex predators are ruled by the limits of the ecosystems in which they inhabit with others. Humanity does not have that, there is no other species truly in our ecosystem and that phenomenon should not have happened in natural evolution.